Which food, when you eat it, instantly transports you to childhood?
At some point in your childhood, you and your friends went outside to play together for the last time, and nobody knew it.
I was in grade 5 when Mum made me join the gym. Made me, because I did not want to leave my friends on the road in the lurch. Jumping from house to house, running across the streets screaming and playing hide and seek, Lagori or even cricket sounded a lot more interesting than learning gymnastics. Mum used to take tuition for these three kids who used to learn gymnastics at this institute in Jayanagar. Sometimes, she would let us tag along and would let me help monitor the younger kids. I used to enjoy playing at their house because their street had many ground-floor houses. But these kids were not allowed to play like I used to play on our street. I had no idea if there were kids on this street apart from these three kids, so hide and seek was restricted to one house. I remember climbing the wall and then the chajja and from there onto the terrace and the furor it caused. With that incident, I became ‘tuition ma’am’s that kid’ and Mum only took me to their home if there were no other options. Around this time, she also found out about the details of the gymnastics classes and took us for a trial session. The classes were scheduled between 5 pm and 7 pm every evening every day of the week apart from Sunday. Mum loved it. She hoped that I would not get into any more trouble if I started these classes. The trial session was probably for the coaches because Mum had decided that we would be going for those classes although she had not told us as much.
That first day of class was more fun and introduction than anything and did not really paint an appropriate picture of what gymnastics was about. Day 2 was fun, but was also about discipline and following instructions. On day 3, my feet hurt, my body hurt and I hated having to run there to be on time for class. I wanted out but Mum was having none of it. I complained and wailed to Dad, but what I did not know then that I realized far too many years later was that, once Mum made up her mind, it was done. There were no options. You just did the best you could and moved on. Dad tried his best to bail us out, but Mum was firm, Gymnastics continued. I decided to negotiate and use this as an opportunity to get a little extra. So, I asked Mum to give us a little extra money to get to the gym and back. Of course, I did not start here, I first tried to get her to get us an auto – a private auto to take us to the gym and back. She refused. Then I asked her if we could at least try the school bus to get back from school. She refused. So, I came to the third option, pls give us some money so we can buy some snacks to eat on the way to the class as we were always too tired to be able to manage. Initially, I thought I had blown it, but she relented. She gave us 5Rs to go to the class and back.
We used to go to school on public transport like a handful of other students from our school. The bus stop was some distance away from home and we had to walk back home and then change our clothes and have our milk before we left to catch the next bus for the gym session. The school was about 3 stops from home. The gym was usually 5 scheduled stops away and depending on the crowd the driver would sometimes take a couple of unscheduled stops en route as well. Even with all this drama, we used to reach class a couple of minutes before it started. We had enough time to hide our bags and bottles of water before we had to start class.
The 5 Rs was for both of us and we could pick up anything and eat. There was a bakery at the corner of our street, Phalguna Bakery, and this guy used to bake his loaves of bread in the evening. As we walked passed his bakery he would be bringing out trays of freshly baked bread. Even without meaning it, while we walked by the bakery on our way to the gym our bellies full of the snacks Mum left accessible around the house, our stomachs would rumble when we passed the bakery. That first week we just picked up a pack of Glucose biscuits and ate it while we walked to the bus stop, and then on the bus and sometimes even on our way back. But we used to exercise so much, that even after eating a pack of 10 regular-sized biscuits we would be starving when we got home. Mum would be back by then and she would serve us our dinner. Post dinner, I had to stay up to finish my homework and studies. Everything would be completed by 930 pm and then I would crash.
That first week of classes post negotiations, we ate glucose biscuits. The following week we started experimenting. We would pick up these tiny coin-sized biscuits and eat them. A few days later, we alternated, I would buy the glucose coin-sized biscuits and my younger sibling would buy the tiny hexagon-shaped salt biscuits and we would share and eat them. So far, we bought the biscuits and barfis from Deven stores, and delivery was prompt, almost immediate. I used to buy Dad’s cigarettes from Deven stores so he knew me personally and was aware that I was always in a hurry because I used to come to the shop in the middle of a game and did not want to spend time standing in line waiting, so he used to serve me almost immediately. Deven stores the store manager who used to handle the money at the till would also pack and serve us our items so it was prompt. When we realized that the bakery had tons of stuff that would come in our budget, we would stop there when we had an extra five minutes to waste. We started with the masala bread slices first, then we tried the dil-khush and the dil-pasand. Dilkhush was cheaper, but we did not like the taste, Dil-pasand always hit the spot. The flakey exterior and the tooty-frooty coconut-based filling were the perfect snacks before the gym. The only problem was the delivery. Delivery at the bakery was on a first-cum-first-serve basis. In the bakery, the manager sat at the till and refused to budge. He would have a helper who would pack as per the instructions announced loudly. And we had to wait for the change and items. The bakery definitely had a lot more options that would keep us full for a lot longer, but they took time to serve. I never used to have any spare minutes on our way to the gym as I had to ensure that I did not rush my younger sibling who I was responsible for. So we only opted for the bakery when we had time to stand and drool at the counter. We went back to picking up our biscuits from Deven stores.
Initially, we used to pick up Glucose biscuits all the time, until one day when the store ran out of stock. Then, he told us to try Parle-G biscuits. At the same cost, these seemed somewhat bigger and more delicious. To be honest, I don’t think the taste was all that much more unique, but in my mind, it seemed like a better deal. So we graduated from Glucose to ParleG biscuits. The only problem was that my younger sibling ate a lot slower than I did. I inhaled my pack, and she used to chew each bite 32 times before swallowing. So she would only be done with a couple of biscuits by the time we reached our class. The deal I had with Mum was that we would eat and finish our snacks before we reached our class, but my younger sibling would only finish a few biscuits from a pack of biscuits. And when Mum enquired, she was honest. I was in trouble and I had no idea how to escape. Mum wanted her to eat more than just a few biscuits before class. She could only finish half a pack of biscuits before class. And I wanted to continue getting money to buy the biscuits. So I just started getting the small coin-shaped biscuits again. Both the sweet one and the salt one. And I used to make her eat fistfuls of them on the way. I did not let her count the biscuits before she put them in her mouth, so she had no number to give and her response to Mum was always, ‘I ate so many sweet and so many salty’. Mum was happy. I was happy.
Those tiny coin-sized biscuits were the same flavor as the Glucose and ParleG biscuits and the salt biscuits were crispy salt biscuits that would melt in your mouth. I remember not chewing my fistful of biscuits and just letting them dissolve in my mouth while I waited for my younger sibling to finish chewing her fistful of them. Even this way, I ate a lot faster than she did. But she ate a lot more of these biscuits than she did the regular-sized Parle-G biscuits. Have things changed today? I have no idea, I haven’t had a biscuit pack finishing race with her in forever. But even today, one bite of a Parle-G biscuit takes me back in time, as I am confident it will her as well, to those rushed evenings, running from one destination to the next the final goal, to get to class before 5 pm.
Just a little more 