2021: The year the food came to me

The grandmother doesn’t know I exist, but she has been giving me untold joy in these pandemic-hit days. Thakuma is the star of a Bengali food show on YouTube. She has lost most of her teeth but, I am happy to see, not her zest for food. She digs into meat curry or biryani, and then smiles happily at the camera. Her chirpy granddaughter-in-law, Limu, who does most of the cooking, teases her mercilessly, and I find that my evenings glide by, just watching them in their idyllic home in rural Bengal.

They — and a host of others like them — are my food companions these days. There was a time, not so long ago, when I had little to do with social media. My world revolved around visiting tiny eateries in Old Delhi and the people who wielded the karchhi or fanned the embers of a coal fire. The virus, however, keeps adding bricks to the wall that’s come up between me and my food friends. I had thought this year would be better, but the summer surge has pushed me back into my secluded corner.

Old haunts

I miss them all, those little-known cooks and eatery owners. It’s been ages since I met Jain Sa’ab. I used to take the Metro to Old Delhi, and then walk down to his little teashop in a grain market. I would sit there and watch him make his famous sandwiches with all kinds of fruit — from apple and guava to mango and banana.

I wonder how Bade Mian is doing; he prepares the most delicious kheer in Hauz Qazi. The milk boils in a cauldron over long hours and, when he serves it to you, it’s light pink in colour and amazing to taste. I hope Talib in Zakir Nagar has been keeping well, too. I can’t recall when I last had his tikkas and seekh kababs, soft and succulent.

The pandemic has turned the food industry upside down. Restaurants have shut shop, and while some are tentatively opening their doors, it will be a while before I see myself cutting into a steak, however juicy, in an indoor restaurant. Fear still hangs like a dark cloud, and the mask-less crowds milling in front of the kababchi on the street corner have kept me away from my old haunts.

Home delivered

There is no dearth of good food, of course — for everybody from the home chef to the five-star hotel is now delivering food. The pandemic has prompted many to take to cooking, leaving their old work (some because business has been slow, others because the pandemic has taught them that there is more to life than a lucrative career).

Travel may have ceased for the time being, but food comes from across the country — ranging from sesame pork from the Northeast and Kerala’s appam-stew to Himachali babru (kachori stuffed with black gram) and Mumbai’s sprouts-laden misal pav.

I think if the pandemic has taught me a lesson, it is to be happy with what I have. If I can’t go to the mountain, the mountain comes to me. So, food makes its presence felt, apart from delivery apps, through books and food shows. The books are the kinds that I read over days, savouring every page. Charles Spence’s Gastrophysics: The New Science of Eating tells me how the joys of eating are all in the mind. Chitrita Banerji’s new collection —

A Taste of My Life

— regales me with an anecdote about a youngster who frowns at mochar ghonto, a much-loved east Indian dish of banana florets. The texture is off-putting, the young one complains, and anyway she’d rather have French fries with her friends.

Surf and watch

As for food shows, all that I have to do is surf and watch. An army of unknown men and women, armed with their phone cameras, has filled the vacuum in my heart with their unscripted prattle and shaky shots of jalebis bobbing in hot oil.

It’s been a sad year, but let’s try and take each day as it comes. And if that dreaded Omicron pushes us back into seclusion, we can all turn to the Village Cooking Channel on YouTube. A group of men somewhere in Tamil Nadu cooks and feeds people. The surrounding is lush green, the cheery mood is infectious, and the fried chicken inviting. Or we could watch Thakuma try out some papri chaat. “Never had this before,” she says, and then waves out gaily to the camera.

What’s a virus, she seems to be asking. Pooh.

The author likes reading and writing about food as much as he does cooking and eating it. Well, almost.