by Mathangi Krishnamurthy
On a plane ride to Mumbai last week, I bought oatmeal cookies. For a fleeting second, I thought about sharing them with my surly co-passenger, who had been looking straight ahead ever since occupying the middle seat right next to my windowed one. If I had a middle seat, I might be surly too. I thought the cookies would help. But then the thought remained just that, fleeting. In the sum total of a minute, I played in my head the awkwardness of first contact, the shaking of head by my equally awkward interlocutor, and then my consequent retreat into the “I told you so” shell. Having successfully pre-empted my unnecessary state of embarrassment in the world, I proceeded therefore to not offer him a cookie. And there in that one stroke, I become part of a world full of strangers shedding candy.
All classroom politics and judgements solidified during lunchtime. Who shared with who, who did not, whose lunchbox was emptied the soonest, and whose was the humble steel tiffin as opposed to bright and matte-finished plastic ware. A few years ago, I espied the same steel tiffins many dollars marked up, at the Whole Foods mother ship in Austin, Texas, and guffawed. Sometimes, at lunchtime, we invited the teachers to come share food with us. A few always obliged. Sometimes I try and recall the delicious pleasure of having been able to bring about that coup; the breaking of borders between the classroom and the teachers' room. Many years later at our first job, my single friends and I, lived far from home, and were none of us industrious or brisk enough to make lunches. So we relied on the munificence of colleagues' parents, who generously sent extra food our way. Morsel by greedy morsel, we discovered other regional specialties; flaky sugared flatbread and jaggeried mangoes, delightfully puffy rice, and curries full of peanut powder. In the midst of deadlines, screaming bosses, and capricious clients, there was always lunchtime. In a recent movie titled The Lunchbox, the camera spends large amounts of time focused on the protagonist Irrfan Khan savoring each layer of his mistakenly delivered lunchbox; and proceeding to eat it all. In the midst of a deadening job and a morbidly quiet life, the lunchbox comes into his life with reminders of connection, and love, and flavor.
My favorite lunch boxes have been those we packed for travel; train journeys to be precise. The night before would emerge all our motley stainless steel boxes and thermos flasks. Washed and laid out on the dining table, they would gleam even as the family sat around making decisions on the food decisions which would carry us through the next twenty-four hours (or twenty six or twenty eight). One thermos of buttermilk, tart and bursting with cumin, coriander, and ginger; a box filled to the brim with small cut potatoes roasted in pepper, and salt; and finally one packed with idlis rolled in chili and coriander powder or gunpowder, held together with pungent Indian sesame oil. There was always the mandatory curd rice container with mango pickle.
As I write this, I also realize that I no longer ever make myself a lunchbox, to work, or for travel. Relying on wayside stores, packaged food, canteens, overpriced airport stalls, digestive medicines, and perhaps even a capacity to allay hunger, I leave home footloose and fancy free. I cannot, however, hold back an envious stare, when I see a competent co-passenger pull out Houdini-like from the innards of a tiny carry-on bag, gleaming steel tiffins and zip-locked treats. Nobody ever offers to share though.
For many long years, I used to view the world through nostalgia and what if's and continued to be absent. Now I gaze fondly at the past and look at old photographs in a way reminiscent of Faiz and old love, as necessary loss. Now I practise presence. Like the untidy nest built by the little bird on the ceiling of our tiled roof, it is a messy prospect. It asks one to let go, and to embrace the new world and its habits, and march forward, and yet maintain memory. But I like sharing food, and neat bento-box like lunch boxes, and magical travel treats. I do think I should try and make myself a lunch box today.