Taste Teleports!

Author: Aarthi@Paperandme / Labels:


             In a party, we often hear people saying this dish reminds me of my mother’s so and so recipe. Yes, like many other events, taste is also saved in our brain as a memory. I spent most of my childhood days in central India. So I can say that most of my first tastes have been basically north Indian. When I see a cup of shrikhand or dhokla in the Indian Restaurant or fresh singada in the Indian grocery shop, I would get excited and my husband won’t even know why, because he being a typical South Indian didn’t even hear those names before.
              This summer our neighbor brought back mangoes from India. They shared a few with us. We do get mangoes here but these were not just any mangoes. These were Dusheri mangoes. As always, I got excited and asked my husband, ‘These are the variety I told you about. Do you remember?’ and as always he didn’t remember. I even told my mother, ‘See I am getting Dusheri mangoes in Kuwait!’. I haven’t even seen them since I was 10 years old. That would be more than 15years ago. Now these Dusheri mangoes are small and have to be eaten in a special way. You shouldn’t cut the mangoes. That will not bring out the taste. One has to squeeze the mango nicely and then cut open a small portion of the top and sip on the juice. The very next day the mangoes were ripe and ready to eat. As I squeezed the pulp and sipped the mango, I was teleported to my childhood days. I was excited like a kid who gets to taste mangoes for the first time this summer. It definitely didn’t stop there. I taught my kid and he enjoyed it too. It is amazing how an old childhood taste can make your day even after 15 years.I guess that is how memories work.

4 comments:

Priya Sreeram said...

nice read and yes memories get refreshed by such simple but poignant moments !

King Vishy said...

Woww!! Whatte coincidence!! I was just telling the misses 2 days back about the wonders of human beings having a keen sense/memory of taste!!! It's one of the sensory pleasures that cannot be recorded and replayed artificially.. But still, our brain can store taste memories over decades and retrieve them in a jiffy at the slightest trigger.. (For that matter, smell too)..
Now, can Oracle/SAP do that?!
And the method of eating mangoes - that's exactly the way I prefer too!! Messy, but joyous :)

Divya said...

For me, it would take a 'kalaan fry' from the streets of Coimbatore get the same effect :)

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