YUUUCCKKK! Food is and has always been a four-letter word for me. Vis-a-vis eating, I always used to have this image of all kinds of stuff being fed into that hole called a mouth and then there are those machines called teeth which grind them into some kind of a yucky paste to be swallowed through a pipe called the gullet. Yeeeeewwwww.
I honestly wish our dear God had made this aspect of our lives a little more aesthetic and palatable (pun intended).
I hate it when people talk about food. I feel like strangling them when they go into lengthy discussion on what to eat for lunch. That done, then they discuss what to eat for dinner. For me food is nothing but a device, a device to satisfy an irritant called hunger. In fact whenever I sit down for a meal, I stop eating the moment my initial hunger pangs are over.
Also if there’s one thing I hate more than men talking about food, it’s women talking about food. I want to strangle God for giving women such pretty mouths and then making those mouths talk only about food — as if there was nothing better in life.
And people who take pride in cooking are another species for me. As if eating wasn’t bad enough, I don’t know what to call the entire process of cooking to make other people eat.
I hate kitchens and never ever enter one if I can help it. Recently when I went to meet Nana Patekar in Goa to narrate the script of Ab Tak Chhapan 2, he insisted on hearing it from his kitchen, while he was cooking. So for the first time in hundreds of years, I entered a kitchen. To be honest, I was fascinated by the sight of the stove and raw vegetables. I was even more fascinated with the passion with which Nana cooks.
Instead of sharing my views on food and cooking with Nana, I kept them to myself. Because I know that if he gets pissed off Nana is capable of cooking me also. And I have to confess that what he cooked tasted really delicious!
Practically everyone I know goes on and on about their mom’s cooking. This makes me wonder — if everyone’s mom is such a good cook then the world must be full of only good cooks. Frankly I love the cooking of whoever does the job at Mumbai’s Lucky restaurant, way more than my mom’s. There is a reason for this: the restaurant’s cook doesn’t insist I should eat some more, and have another helping. The cook doesn’t even mind if I leave my biryani unfinished.
Sorry mom! Aaaah with all that talk about food, I am feeling hungry now. Mom, is there anything to eat at home?