Panning memories and washing pans

When my daughter went to  hostel for the first time in college, as know-it-all parents who had spent considerable time in hostel ourselves, we  eagerly went to meet our daughter with the one thing that was assured to be met with even more eagerness… food. We measured everything against our own experience and how we were perpetually hungry those days with hardly any choice of outlets on the campus apart from the hostel mess.

So, when we went to the daughter’s hostel, with the food that my husband and I had spent the better part of the day preparing, her friends did total justice to it but the daughter told us not to trouble ourselves as times had changed. Now a wide variety of food was available pretty much around every nook and corner of the campus. The husband was a bit hurt as he was the primary chef but we soon adapted to this new reality and then started tasting whatever was available. It was a voyage into the past as we started hanging around the canteen and sampling a few things that brought back memories of student life.

We stood in queues to order chai, samosas, maggi, and so on and sofo forth. Quickly we started looking forward to this and now the roles got reversed. Instead of taking tonnes of food, we started going on an empty stomach to gorge on the hostel fare. My parents also came along to sample simple fares like chole chaat at a third of the price as compared to the open market. Then one day my daughter looked at us suspiciously and asked if we came to meet her or eat the canteen food. We looked around sheepishly like little kids caught out and denied vociferously, “Of course, we come to meet you. Why, what a question.”

Visiting the campus always led to dredging up my own memories of college life like panning in the shallows for gold – only the shallows ran a few years deep. When we came back to the hostel in the evening from a day spent in the labs there would hardly be any food available as we would have missed lunch and dinner was yet to be prepared. So, we had to pretty much fend for ourselves and being a group of seven, we would make the newly launched maggi or left-over roti ki sabji, which was essentially rotis broken to bits and tossed with some vegetables in spicy gravies. The work was divided amongst us. One cut the onions, another tomatoes, and yet another added the tarka etc. Having no culinary skills to speak of I assumed the humble duty of always washing the dishes with another friend.

Years later, time brought back these hostel friends into my life and as each one came back, they always mentioned my dainty dishwashing skills. And quite naturally asked if over the years my culinary repertoire had increased beyond the dish washing (which it had only marginally). After hearing the same thing for the umpteenth time, my daughter turned to me and asked, “Mummy did you do anything beyond washing dishes in your youth?”

The irony of it being that during COVID, I was the elected dishwasher while my husband was the chef. So, I don’t blame my daughter for thinking that my expert skills ran the gamut of dishwashing only!

A friend was recently remembering his struggles during college days. Recounting his experiences of studying in Australia years back and how his dream was to eat one meal / one tiffin of the restaurant he washed dishes in. Now that he is settled well with a few millions in his account, I feel I’m in august company though living in hopes of a fraction of his bank account to reflect in mine. Perhaps I didn’t wash enough dishes in my youth!

My daughter, bless her, felt that my lack of real cooking skills made the transition to hostel life easier for her. While her friends groaned about missing home-cooked food, she was thankful for simple, unburnt food! I am notorious for forgetting whatever is in the skillet on the gas as I get mesmerised by my laptop – only to return to this world by the burning smell of whatever was cooking! I remember returning once from an emergency visit to the hospital and finding my nose assailed by the strong smell of burnt milk.  I smirked to myself thinking that today surely someone’s bartan is going to be tough to be washed. As I climbed each landing of the staircase, the smirk turned slowly woeful as the realisation dawned that that someone was none other than yours truly!

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