Sunday, February 26, 2006

Of Eating…

I like lunch time for various reasons and one of them is coz that’s the time I get to see a lot of people all at the same place with the same goal.

Its very intriguing for me to see that even in the 21st century, when we have traveled to the space and where distances have become a matter of fact, we still gobble down chunks of food and go Chomp! Chomp! Chomp!

Why cant it be as simple as popping down a few capsules and following it up with some hydration? That would be NEAT!

The basic necessity behind eating is to gain energy and survive, it makes me wonder what all goes with it…Chatting with friends and cracking jokes (its next to impossible for many I know to eat by themselves, a company is an absolute must!),carefully choosing from the buffet their customized armor of taste bud stimulators ( Did we develop tastebuds first and then the sense of taste or the other way round??)….

A dinner with an maddeningly assorted set of cutlery, and plates and courses and meals and drinks and candles and goblets and people to go with them…Its not just about eating anymore..IS IT? Eating is probably just an excuse!

I still find it extremely funny when I see people eat! Call me crazy!! But I do…

There are different kinds of ‘eaters’. Taking my PL as an example of the Prepared Eater, these are the kind of people who always get things like pickles, chutney, chips, crackers and water and ready before the course is served so that once it is, they can directly attack, a classic example of his GTD personality in play.

Then there are Pickers (eg. one of my teammates ) who pick at the food once in a while, when they come out of their reverie only to go into another pretty soon..

Then there Leavers who always have to have food left over in their plates…
Then there are Stuffers who will go on stuffing even after they are done so that food doesn’t go waste!!!

There are Tele Eaters, who are on the phone when they are eating…(there is one of this kind in our cafeteria…its so much fun watching her talk into her mouth piece with wired dangling down her ears as raises her eyebrows and exclaims to someone quite far away….)

There are Strategic eaters, who apply a strategy to every kind of food they eat. If it’s a cake, they start from a corner, if its roti, they have a knack of rolling it into a tiny cup using which they fetch the dal and drop it in their mouths that its such connoisseur act…

Then there are Focussed Eaters who can hardly be diverted during the soulful rendezvous between theirs hands and mouth.

We have the ChatterBox Eaters who simply cant eat silently. Cracking jokes, making fun at the others, discussing the same old stale jokes over and over again….even if they don’t have anything to say.

Why did God have to model Anthropoids this way? Despite the sophisticated laptops and jets and missiles, its still puzzling how we eat and do a few other things ;-) still the Ole fashioned way…

If you have had the patience to bear with me until now, I would dare to test it by stretching it further.

Just imagine the millions and millions of mothers/ wives/ husbands/ chefs spending a considerable amount of their lifetimes cooking for their families…

A whole industry dedicated to Chomp ! Chomp ! Chomp !

I have taken to believing that cooking is such a waste of time that my meals look like this of late.

Breakfast : Sada dosa and chai at Nortel. Hardly takes five minutes to be served. If I am too lazy to goto Nortel or if I am running late, I have sathu mavu kanji.. it’s a mix of pulses boiled in sweetened hot water.

Lunch : Fruit Platter and Orange juice if I manage to bypass Bhranti’s eyes. If not, I go to the canteen for the ritual and have rice with dal or curd.

Dinner : Diced cucumbers, tomatos, carrots and shredded beetroot with a dash of lemon and salt followed with a few slices of wheat bread and topped with a Twinnings Tea bag dipped in sweetened water. Making tea the old fashioned way is again a waste of time. All my dinner takes only fifteen minutes to be served...

I thought that I am probably going through of lazy bone phase and that I would soon grow out of this…but to my amusement, I haven’t. Its been almost 4 weeks since I cooked something considerable. Thankfully I am single and just responsible for myself. I don’t intend to kill a family of starvation as everybody doesn’t appreciate the stuff I eat!