When it comes to food, we are all creatures of habit. For instance, if we are on a long vacation or have gone to a new city or country for work, we might be adventurous and try our new cuisine in the beginning but after a while we start hunting for an a restaurant that serves the familiar food of our region. Though today we have many food chains operating in most cities and towns serving foods from different regions, they are either too expensive or well below par, as far as taste goes. Still, it is something. Two or three decades back, things were worse when we eagerly went into a restaurant serving idlis and dosas and came out wondering what it was that we ate, especially the ‘sambar’! Oh, how we would desperately hope that the distant cousin or even the casual acquaintance from back home who lived in that city would invite us home for a meal!

We might train our palates to get used to the food of the place we live in, but we can’t get the craving for familiar food out of our system. There was this maid from rural Tamil Nadu who came to work for us. When she sat for her first meal at our place, she began sobbing into her plate scaring me badly. I thought she was homesick, but it turned out that she was eating rice and sambar after weeks of parathas, subzis, kadhis and toasts at her earlier employers’, and was overcome with emotion when she tasted the food from her own state!

Then, there are the comfort foods, which are in a league of their own. They are called comfort food for a reason, as they have the power to miraculously lift our spirits when we are feeling blue or down with the sniffles, and looking for some TLC. These foods somehow wrap us in a cocoon of love, nostalgia and more, with each one of us favouring some specific food. It could be anything — dal-chawal, khichdi, rasam-rice, dal-roti, a hot cup of Horlicks, aloo parathas or even the now discredited Maggi. More than even the taste, it is the memories associated with our favourite comfort foods that release positive serums in our brains, giving us the much-needed happiness-boost.

Talking of simple and familiar foods, sometimes too much rich food can also make us crave simple food. This had come home to me in my childhood when we had gone to the south, to attend some weddings and make a pilgrimage to Tirupati.

I must have been eight or nine then. In addition to the wedding there were visits to many relatives’ houses. Though the wedding food was most enjoyable, when grand feasts followed us even at our relatives’ places, it became a little too much.  Soon our palates began begging for a simple meal, please! Rasam or curd rice with papad and pickles would have been manna from heaven to us at that point.

The trip to Tirupati came next. Climbing the hills on foot was a great experience, even if tiring for my young legs. It was a short trip, and we didn’t have time for a proper meal, making do with the temple prasadam, which was divine but did not qualify as comfort food! On our way back, our parents decided on the spur of the moment to visit their village enroute to Chennai. My father had some cousins and a distant aunt in his native village.  

We walked the one-kilometer distance from the small station to the village, but news of our visit had preceded us, thanks to the village ‘telegraph’, which served well in the absence of telephones! By the time we reached the street where the aunt lived, it was nearly eight in the evening, but heads popped up from doorways, followed by greetings! Father’s aunt was waiting for us at her door. She had not seen my father or his family in years, and was fairly bursting with joy.

Chatting nineteen to a dozen, she busied herself, quickly making preparations for a meal. She had finished dinner when we entered the small house, but was totally unfazed by the task of feeding five mouths at a moment’s notice, at that time of the night! Her tiny frame bustled about, lighting the small coal fired stove called kumutti, and then lit a kerosene wick-stove. She put rice to boil on the stove and made other preparations refusing any help from Mother, all the while chatting with us asking for and providing news about family near and far. Soon the smell of brinjals roasting on coal wafted into our nostrils increasing our hunger pangs. When she served us the wonderful food, we fell upon it like a pack of hungry wolves and polished off the last morsel! Truly a meal to remember.

Decades later, I can still taste that lovely meal of rasam and buttermilk-rice with baingan bharta, roasted papad and pickles, but don’t remember the taste of any of the grand meals we had had before that. Was it the tasty food? Was it her love? I think it was a bit of both that had made it a memorable meal. Ah, that was comfort food at its best – simple, wholesome and entirely satisfying, served with love.

Is it any wonder then that no matter which part of the world we are in, we look for home-style food, preferably cooked in a home?

For my recipe on rasam and rasam powder, see  Rasam – Comfort Food Par Excellence

Homepage pic: https://www.funfoodfrolic.com/