Sambaar During Eye Surgery

(Published in Zeitgeist, The New Indian Express, on 27 June, 2009)

We’re a cult.

We call ourselves the Prudish Eaters.

The least thing can make us want to stop eating. It’s not that we don’t enjoy our food. While I often say I don’t particularly care what I eat, I think it’s a defence mechanism my Prudish Eating has found for itself. When I’m more-or-less confident I won’t be forced to visualise something repellent, I indulge myself in chocolate and cheese to a fault – so much so, a friend of mine whom the waiters at coffee shops automatically put my plate in front of, once called out, “yeah, it has to be the fat guy who ordered lasagne and hot chocolate with whipped cream on it! The iced tea has to be for the girl in leggings!" and swapped places with me, fuming, while the understandably dumbstruck waiter watched.

Maybe it’s because we enjoy particular kinds of food so much that we can’t handle anything unpalatable – metaphorically, of course. I often attribute it to growing up in a family of doctors. At weddings, my mother and aunts and great-aunts would indulge in conversations about the minutiae of eye surgery, while most people were focused on complimenting each other’s jewellery and saris.

“But laser surgery is completely safe. The eye is open all through, and the laser just cuts through and sets everything straight,” I remember one of them saying during breakfast at someone’s wedding, “some more sambaar, please!”

The brinjals on my banana leaf had begun to look singularly unappealing.

“God, I hope it’s not cut anyone’s optic nerve so far!” another relative would laugh, and suddenly, the idiyappam on my leaf would become inedible.

Then there’s dinner at home. As a schoolchild, having earned a home-cooked meal after a hard day’s work, I would be about to dig in, when the telephone would ring.

“Hello?...Yes?...Oh! How many times has the baby...?" (Yes, that ended with an unpalatable task.)

I think everyone at home was thrilled when my mother was gifted a mobile phone and would disappear to conduct her conversations with patients, the highlights of which involved the number of times certain bodily functions were performed, and the consistency and colour of the products of those.

It is the Curse of Prudish Eaters that we’re haunted all our lives by people whose natural propensity is to talk of Consumption-Stoppers.

One of my fellow Prudish Eaters had the traumatic experience of having lunch with an environmentalist and a former resident of Mumbai. Her lunch partners found common ground in the open drains of Mumbai, and the smell that lingers around Mulund. “There was Manchurian,” was all she could manage when she stumbled out, and looked for solace in me, “there was Chinese food…and they spoke of open drains in Mumbai…”

Another Prudish Eater friend of mine lost twenty-five kilograms in a year.

“So, what have you been doing?” I asked him in amazement, when I met him after a gap of eight months.

“Not doing. Not doing,” he said, miserably, “it’s my roommate. He walks about brushing his teeth when I’m having breakfast. I throw away bread and cereal everyday.”

But a reporter friend of mine scored one for our cult. He had pulled an all-nighter for his organisation during a particularly gripping murder case, and his reliever walked in as he was eating breakfast.

“Oh, it’s so annoying, I had to do a live report on the case all morning,” she said, bleary-eyed, “you know, I don’t even get time to brush my teeth.”

“I don’t want to know, please,” he said.

“No, but seriously, I haven’t had a bath in two days,” she insisted.

“That explains the smell,” he said, getting up to throw away his breakfast, in a manner reminiscent of Leonides of ‘300’ fame.

I believe she’s never mentioned skipping her ablutions since.