Opinion A momo for myself
My only creeping worry surrounded by all this variety is if I am missing out on something better – as anyone with a remote and a Netflix account would know.
The sharpest reminder comes every time I am out alone and now order “just for myself” a plateful of anything, momos included — usually in the cinema hall where the job requires me to squeeze a lunch in while watching films. Love is, setting aside that last momo piece for your child. It sounds pithy, but it is meant to be. And with two grown children in the house who can sniff a momo from the dungeons of their rooms, from which they emerge at their choosing, you better have one for each.
I use momo as a metaphor, of course. But before you dismiss it as flimsy, consider this: rarely has such translucence held such succulence; add the red, fiery sauce and the ear-popping experience stays with you much longer than those infinitesimal moments between a full and an empty plate of momos.
Returning to the metaphor, what happens with those momos increasingly reminds me of my own growing-up years. Restaurant visits were rare, money scarce, and a go-to order was tomato soup, “1:2”. My sister and I spent a large part of the soup round eyeing our mother’s crunchy bread crumbs. She, of course, dutifully fished them out of her soup bowl to put them in ours, equally (or maybe not, my sister being the less likely one to throw a tantrum).
Did our mother want those bread crumbs to herself? We never asked. But now that both of us have moved on to other soups, and have our own bread crumbs to split and share between our children, I often wonder.
I also try and think back to whether I know what my mother’s absolute favourite food is, and come up short – though given that she is like a child in trance when it comes to ice-cream, at least the dessert part is settled. Then I wonder when I ever got cooked a meal at my home because solely I wanted to eat it, not to meet son’s ever-growing “protein requirements”, or to fulfill daughter’s hostel-deprived taste buds, or to nurture husband’s belief that dabbas of home-made kebabs kept in the freezer will get us through any doomsday.
The sharpest reminder comes every time I am out alone and now order “just for myself” a plateful of anything, momos included — usually in the cinema hall where the job requires me to squeeze a lunch in while watching films. As I sit cushioned in the seat watching, if luck would have it, Hugh Grant, and it’s another person delivering to my seat a hot meal, it is a cornucopia of pleasures.
I step out into the food court and the pleasures multiply: so many outlets, so many choices, and the decision entirely mine. What do I want to have at that particular time, no breakfast, lunch or dinner categories to factor in? What sins to indulge without considering calories, setting examples, or worrying about the cleaning up to do after? What guilty pleasure in disposing of something I don’t end up liking?
My only creeping worry surrounded by all this variety is if I am missing out on something better – as anyone with a remote and a Netflix account would know.
As for those momos, I am slowly exploring other things – not the least because the cinema hall I frequent has the “healthier”, wheat option. Now whoever wanted that! Sandwiches, wraps have my fancy now and – if you must know – brownies.
But guess what, more often than not, halfway through, I wrap half a brownie in a paper napkin, put it in my bag, and bring it home. The children may not eat it, but the sight of that hopelessly crushed brownie lying on the dining table for anyone to have fills me completely.
National Editor Shalini Langer curates the fortnightly ‘She Said’ column
shalini.langer@expressindia.com
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