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When you can’t buy things, you learn to ask for things, and when you ask for things, you learn something about yourself and others.
Throughout last week, I have been asking my friends to make me aloo parathas.
It started last Sunday, when Kanishka and Avantika came over for lunch. My cooking range is limited to pasta and pulao so, if you eat at my place regularly, you might find the menu a little repetitive. Knowing that, I had made two different types of pasta — farfalle, bell peppers and spring onions in Mexican salsa sauce and casarecce and baby corn in cheese and wine sauce — and added mushrooms on toast as a side dish. However, I wasn’t really surprised when, five minutes into lunch, Avantika took a break from picking at her food and asked me —
Aren’t you bored of being off consumption yet?
Well, I’m not bored of being off consumption yet, but I am indeed tired of eating muesli, fruit, salad, sandwiches and pasta for breakfast, lunch and dinner, day after day. Avantika’s comment had seeded the craving in my mind and, by Monday evening, the craving has taken definite shape — aloo parathas.
As a child, I was very fond of aloo parathas. However, I have more or less stayed away from them ever since I grew up and discovered that both doctors and women like a trim waistline. So, I was a little surprised when I started obsessing over aloo parathas in the same way I used to obsess over McDonald’s paneer salsa wraps.
I thought of all the times years ago when I had finished off half a dozen aloo parathas in one sitting. I walked around Kala Ghoda and Colaba for an hour, looking into restaurant windows and wondering if they made nice aloo parathas. I even called up half a dozen friends to ask if they would make aloo parathas for me for dinner. I was heartbroken that all of them had either already had dinner or were eating out.
In the end, I came back home and heated up the leftover pasta from Sunday. Thankfully, it didn’t taste as terrible as I expected it to.
The next three days, however, were absolute aloo paratha bliss. On Tuesday, my ex-girlfriend forced me to come home for lunch; she had made me aloo parathas, in an almost successful attempt at reconciliation. On Tuesday, a friend brought me aloo parathas for dinner; I reciprocated by opening a bottle of my best Merlot for her. On Thursday, another friend at office brought me aloo parathas for lunch, even though she herself eats at the office canteen.
Of course, there were others who laughed it off as a joke, offered to buy me dinner instead, or looked at me as if I was insane, but that’s not the point. A few months later, I’ll only remember that I asked my friends for a gift and three of them gave it to me.
Last week, I learnt that there’s equal joy in both giving and receiving, when it’s done with ease, in a state of grace. My friends thought that my asking them to make me aloo parathas was really sweet, just as I thought that their making the parathas for me was really sweet. That’s a lesson I’ll do well to remember, both in asking for or receiving gifts and in giving gifts myself.
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[…] thrice a week, I’m meeting my friends once in three weeks. In fact, I think it has been more than a month since I spent any time with my best friends Kanishka and […]