Passion to Pen

             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.

When I went to India on vacation, I told myself that I will post at least once from there. But for me planning never works in India. After coming back I needed some time to get my life back to normal. So I took a break without realizing that it would take me another two months to even come here and post this. Well, expect the unexpected when you have a 3years old confined to the house first because the neighbor’s kid had chicken pox then because he somehow caught it and to top it all we have a peak summer with frequent dust storms. I can hear you(through telepathy of course) “Is that all?”. Actually there is one more and it is sort of the most dreaded one for me. Unlike many other bloggers, I feel that I do a lot of thinking before I post something. I am going to try and overcome this hesitant nature in future. That’s all for now and hoping to post regularly so as to get nice comments from you.