The Dying Art of Eating without Guilt

Quite honestly, I’m super tired of conversations revolving around what people are not eating. 

“17 days of no sugar” (as I’m on my second chocolate tart)

“I’ve given up gluten” (where's my toasted sour dough bread with loads of butter?)

“It’s my 1 year anniversary of turning vegan” (are we celebrating that now?)

“No carbs for me please” (no rice? what do I eat my curry with then?)

Imagine going for a meal with one of these people (I hope my vegetarian-turned-vegan-off-gluten friends aren’t reading this). I’ve learned the hard way to not get annoyed though, by pretending that I’m at the table by myself. In fact I’ve now made it a fun activity by ordering all the ‘wrong’ things when I’m with the people eating ‘right’. 

I have to say that, having grown up with parents with healthy habits (more dad than mom), such as eating early, consuming balanced, mostly vegetarian meals, lectures at the table when we kids would refuse to eat something that didn’t taste good but was good for us … you get the gist, I’ve been brainwashed into eating right most of the time. 

‘Most of the time’ is the key phrase here. There was the usual cheating with deep fried foods, desserts (Bengali sweets are healthy is what we believed) etc. Eating out was never healthy - you ate what you desired without a second thought. Ice-cream sundaes and Flury’s cakes were not frowned upon. Binge eating happened at the big festivals and birthdays. My parents lived fairly healthy and long lives until almost the end. 

The other day this girl, who’s a regular at the cafe and who is always careful about what she eats, said to me.

“I’ve been fantasising about your carrot pineapple cake for weeks now,” she said.

“So what’s stopping you from eating it?” I asked.

It was the calories, the sugar, the cream cheese frosting that looked so decadent.

I thought about it for a second, wanting to somehow convince her to eat it. 

“Well,” I started off saying. “I’m not going to push you to order it but if you do decide to, it’s very important that you eat it with a 100% pleasure and 0% guilt. Otherwise it just won’t taste good.”

She laughed and asked if I would sit with her while she ate it. It may sound like a strange request but I totally got it. Pretending however, to not have got it, I looked at her questioningly. 

“If you sit with me, it’ll be a constant reminder of what you just said about eating without guilt,” she said to me. 

“How about I join you with a slice of my own?” I asked, suddenly wanting cake.

Her eyes lit up. “That would be awesome!”

A second later she added, “I’m paying for your slice too.”

I laughed and asked her why she would do that.

“You’re eating that cake to help me enjoy my slice more. It’s only fair that it should be my treat. I absolutely insist.”

So we ordered an extremely generous slice of cake each and savoured each bite together.

“I’ll never forget this cake,” she said as she licked her spoon. “It’s been a while since I ate dessert without guilt.”

“Tastes a lot better, doesn’t it?” It was a rhetorical question of course. The pleasure on her face was telling me all. 

While writing this, I got really hungry and decided to treat myself to a bacon and cheese frittata. 

Yeah I know it’ll kill me. Just like living will. 

2018 - The Year that Was

Each time we enter into a new calendar year, we tend to reflect upon the one that just went by. Or at least I do. And my verdict for 2018 is that personally, it was a pretty good year for me. I ended the past year with my friends in Kolkata, with laughter, food and travel and began this year with a minor surgery, left over from the accident I had a couple of years ago and something I had been putting off for a while. 

Bringing in the new year with friends

This information was shared with you, not to get sympathy or attention (honestly!) but to talk a little about how working on my mind the past 2 years has helped me to treat the entire hospital episode as just another day (or two) in my life. Of course, the fact that it was a minor surgical procedure helped but it’s never fun to be in an institution where everyone is broken or ill. Or being under the knife. Thankfully I stayed calm through the two days earlier this week, slept like a baby (without aid) and enjoyed the surprisingly good hospital food!

Now going back to last year - it really was a landmark year of sorts for me as I officially got into the ‘feeding’ industry. When I met Ranjeet almost exactly a year ago at the Kolkata airport, I honestly did not think that I would be running a brand new cafe, with so much of ‘me’ in it. While I’ve always enjoyed cooking, feeding and taking culinary lessons, it was always treated as a hobby. In 2018 it became more than that.

Close to my heart - Terra Bites

Cooking for family and friends, and cooking for strangers who are paying for their meals, is like night and day. The former will always appreciate whatever you lay out in front of them, many people from the latter group will try and find fault with everything. Believe me when I tell you that it’s really hard to be judged constantly. 

Thankfully and knock on wood, the response by and large has been fantastic. There will always be some I won’t please, regardless of what I do but as long as I’m seeing happy faces leave the cafe, many of who are returning often, I am nothing short of thrilled. That’s all I’m going to say about it right now because although I’m working on eliminating fear from my mind, I am still afraid to jinx it!! 

Besides the cafe, the year also had me being involved in a story I had written that a friend of mine, Aditya, wanted to turn into a short film. Writing the screenplay together and then being a part of the shoot was an experience that has made me understand films from a completely different perspective. Hopefully the movie will be released for all of you to watch sometime in the early part of this year. 

Coming soon - Fingers crossed!

Although I travelled a fair amount, it took a little bit of a backseat due to these other activities. After three years I went back to my favourite place, Ladakh, and got close to the mountains that I so dearly love. A trip to Varkala during the devastating floods in Kerala, made me realise once again how vulnerable we are to losing our lives. 

Ah Ladakh! How I had missed you

And I have to thank this vulnerability, that I experienced all through 2016, for helping me turn my life around. To do the things I kept putting off, where I can proudly say that I’ve mostly overcome this disease called procrastination. Where into my middle ages I feel like I’m starting life once again, being thankful for every opportunity to learn, grow and enjoy from what life throws my way. My goal for this year is to forget the meaning of fear. 

Once upon a time, when I was a young boy, my dad had my palm read by an ‘expert’. While I have no recollection of what he predicted from those lines, the one thing that (strangely) stayed with me was that I would become famous in the food industry. I’ve always wondered why this piece of information made such an impact, even at that age, that I never forgot about it. And although I have no interest in fame, I think I would like to feed more people and have them appreciate and enjoy what comes out of a kitchen that I may run. 

None of us know what’s in store for us this year, this month, tomorrow or even the next moment. I’ve given up making plans for the future and have never believed in having a bucket list. The future is now and the bucket is going to get kicked in any case. Make the most of the present and have a rocking 2019!