The Day Bread Lost
The easiest breakfast in India, for those short on time, is a preparation involving bread (known as ‘double roti’ in some parts) in some form or the other. You have stalls all around selling bread and eggs, and in north India, where I hail from, one sees street hawkers selling bread and freshly churned (white) butter for office goers. One finds people sitting on their parked scooters, having a quick bite before going off to work.
When I was a child, weekdays meant bread and eggs (I used to consume eggs back then) without a break, because Aai (mother) would be occupied preparing packed lunch for my father and me. Sundays were less hectic for her in the kitchen, and we would have some pohe (the Maharashtrian staple) or upma. To be honest, I’d prefer bread even on Sundays, but wouldn’t speak up for fear of being disciplined. At the National Defence Academy (NDA) too, dinner would be ‘Continental’, i.e., bread with cutlets and baked beans, etc about three to four times a week. I had coursemates complaining ‘Angrez chale gaye apna khana chhod gaye’ (The British are gone but have left their food behind), but I not only did not have an issue, I positively looked forward to those days.
And, well, after marriage I discovered that my wife, too, was a bread lover. That common love saw us through the testing times in our marriage, because after a week of varan-bhaat-bhaji-poli, over the weekend we’d look for some place where we’d get some nice pasta with new flavours, served with, of course, bread. It’s hardly a surprise that our daughters have both evolved to being bread lovers.
So the first time we went out for a vacation abroad, to the USA that time, we never thought we’d have a problem with food. We landed up at my brother’s place, who lived near San Francisco, and moved around from there. Our first outing was a five day SFO- Phoenix (Grand Canyon)- LA- SFO trip, a good part of which was in hotels. After that, we were to stay at home for a day and were out again on a two day trip to Seattle.
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We reached Seattle in the morning and were planning to walk around that day (we had booked ourselves for a Boeing factory tour the next morning). My brother had advised us to definitely visit Pike Place, so I was studying the map to see the route to walk down , when I happened to remark that there was an Indian restaurant, Daawat, close by. Interesting, said The Wife, let’s see what an Indian restaurant looks like in these parts, and then we’ll go to Pike Place.
We sauntered across to Daawat, intrigued that an Indian restaurant was able to survive over there. We did cross a few people who appeared to be ethnic Indians on the street, but was the number large enough to support a business, we wondered. Maybe the locals also like a change over the weekend, the way we like pasta.
And thus we arrived in front of the place. When someone walked in or out, the door would open and the smell of some fresh Indian food would come wafting out. Looks interesting, I said, let’s continue, we have another km and a half to walk, but got no response. I was getting embarrassed; we were a family of four apparently well dressed people staring in at a restaurant window. Then the younger one spoke- Hey! They serve chhole here, and The Wife said yes, let’s just walk in and see what they have on the menu. She had lost to her senses, but didn’t want to admit it just yet.
Eventually, like true Provincials, we had a hearty lunch of naans and chhole before we continued our ‘touristing’! That was the day we realised that posturing apart, we are Indians and need Indian food. And the next time we planned a trip abroad, which, unfortunately, we had to cancel, we planned to carry along sufficient quantities of Ready To Eat rajma and dal makhni and peas pulao to cater for one meal every day!
And what about me- the one person who kept saying let’s go down to Pike Place and see what we get there? There you’ve got me. Once in a long while, when my wife says let’s have bread for breakfast, I offer to make upma, daliya or just Bread ka Upma, but please let’s not have just bread butter for breakfast!
