Blast from the past

Sometimes just an image, a sound, or a smell, can take you right back to your childhood

It is the strangest things that remind you of your childhood at times, evoking memories that lay long buried in your brain. It could be anything really: an image; a touch; a smell; or even a sound. And before you know it, you have been transported back in time to relive those childhood moments that you had thought lost forever.

Last week I had one such moment of déjà vu. Aimlessly channel-surfing, I stopped at FTV because the clothes on the ramp looked mildly interesting, when my eyes were caught by the shoes of one of the models. The square toes; the little strap across the ankle fastened with a buckle; the shiny patent leather; it all looked so familiar. If you ignored the high heel – as I did – the shoes were a dead ringer for the Mary Janes that I had worn to school all through my childhood.

That one image took me back instantly to the Bata store on Chowringhee, Calcutta’s busiest thoroughfare, where I would make an annual pilgrimage at the start of every year to buy the school-mandated black shoes that made up my uniform. There was no agonising over styles, dithering over alternatives, or pondering on colours. There was only one option that I could choose (if choose is the right word) but that didn’t detract from the shopping experience one bit. The thrill of buying a new pair of shoes; the joy of seeing that my feet were finally growing to adult size; and the knowledge that I was going into a new class with all the possibilities it represented; all of this combined to make this trip to the shoe shop one of the highlights of my year.

That same feeling of déjà vu struck me on a recent visit to the local Marks and Spencer store. One entire rail was devoted to leggings with stirrups, a style that I had last worn when I was 10 years old. Now of course, I would not be caught dead in them, so I quickly moved on to the next rail. But quite without volition, an image jumped up and took possession of my brain: the pair of olive-green leggings with sturdy stirrups that I had refused to get out of for an entire year (and which are immortalised in several family photographs taken over the period). And with that image came the memories: of visits to the zoo; of raucous birthday parties where everyone ate far too much cake (and which, suffice to say, not everyone managed to keep down); of picnics with friends; of family weddings where I was the only one not in the regulation ghagra-choli.

Of course, it’s not just clothes or fashion that reminds me of my childhood. Coming across a re-run of Yes Minister on BBC Entertainment has much the same effect. In the days before satellite television arrived in India and we were all at the mercy of Doordarshan programmers, this was the one show that I would hurry home to watch. The opening credits of Chitrahar, which was pretty much appointment viewing in those days; the notes of Abide with me, which we sang every morning Assembly; the sound of a tolling bell, which punctuated my day at school; all these sounds double up as aide-memoires.

And then, there’s food. There are some things that always take me back to the nostalgia-tinted meals of my childhood. Cupcakes with old-style frosting and sprinkles (rather than the new-fangled dollops of cream) remind me of the pastries that I bought every lunch-time from the school cake-wallah. I would carefully consider his two layers of cakes (I could buy only one every day, given my meagre pocket-money), each in a different style and colour, before buying the vanilla cupcake yet again. Clearly, even at that young age, I felt a certain comfort in the familiar.

Of all things, home-style finger chips – rather than the new-fangled French fries we all scoff down these days – conjure up memories of my childhood almost instantly. Cut in chunky bits and deep-fried to a lovely golden, crisp on the outside and moistly crumbly inside, these were served up every Sunday lunch-time, right after Mahabharat, with a side of blood-red ketchup. The aromas wafting from a cup of steaming black tea take me back to holidays spent exploring the grounds of my aunt’s tea estate in Assam, the gardens redolent with what I only later discovered to be the smell of drying tea leaves. The taste of an orange bar, the ice-lolly on a stick that was a staple of my growing years, reminds me of evenings spent hanging over the balcony waiting for the ice-creamwallah – with his colourful van teeming with goodies – to hove into view.

And then, there are the images. The sight of scraggly rows of roses always takes me back to the lawns of the old-style dak bungalows; the good old Ambassador – a rare sight on the road these days – reminds me of road trips taken as a child; and a bouffant hairdo reminds me of the styles my older sister sported in her youth, and which I longed to replicate when I grew up. Of course, by the time I grew out of pigtails, the bouffant was long gone, having been replaced by the gamine crop – but that, as they say, is quite another story.

Word of mouth

Why food is probably the most mood-altering substance around...

Last week I wrote about the kind of woman I could imagine being best mates with. And how I couldn’t possibly be friends with a woman who refused to break bread – yes, literally – with me. To be honest, I’ve always thought this to be something of a personal idiosyncrasy; my obsession with classifying people by what they do or do not eat. But going by the contents of my mail box, I am coming around to the view that I am not alone in judging people by their relationship to food. As the cliché goes: you are what you eat.

Speaking for myself, I believe that food is the most powerful mood-altering substance around. What I eat or drink has a direct connection with how I feel. And how I feel has a direct co-relation with what I want to eat.

When I’m feeling a bit blah about the world, nothing cheers me up more instantly than a quick-fix of chocolate. On particularly stressful days, a judicious dose of carbohydrates can have a calming effect. And there’s nothing to beat the caffeine rush of a cold Diet Coke on a warm summer day.

But just as a good meal can have me burping with satisfaction for days afterwards, there’s nothing quite like a bad meal to put me in a vile mood for the rest of the day. First of all, there’s the opportunity lost, a meal that I will never ever get to enjoy again. Then, there’s the small matter of all those empty calories that have been consumed without any concomitant pleasure.

Small wonder then that I am always so disgruntled at the end of a bad meal – and as hungry as when I began eating. No matter how many calories I have scoffed, if the food doesn’t satisfy my taste buds, it doesn’t assuage my hunger pangs either. So, after a dissatisfying meal, I invariably end up eating another meal to make up for the first.

And then begins the self-loathing. What was I thinking? How could I possibly have eaten a sandwich after that three-course French meal? How could I have come back home and stuffed my face with chocolate after dining at a friend’s house? Why on earth can’t I just let one bad meal go?

But no matter how hard I try to resist, food continues to exert its visceral hold on me. 

It’s funny how this stuff works. I must have a steaming cup of coffee beside me before I feel ready to power up my laptop and begin to work. But slip a sandwich into the mix and suddenly all I want to do is surf endlessly through all the trashier news sites on the internet. Somehow in my mind coffee equals work but coffee plus food equals mindless surfing.

Similarly, I don’t really feel like I am on holiday unless I can order a really sinful treat for my room service breakfast (think French toast, pancakes, waffles, or anything that can induce a sugar rush). But once I’m at home, it doesn’t feel right eating anything other than organic muesli with low-fat milk first thing in the morning.

In times of stress I long for the comfort food of my childhood, the nursery delights of nostalgia. The bread pakoras of the school canteen; the mashed potato toasties mum would make for an evening snack; the frosted cupcakes that were served at every birthday party; the illicit chaat that I had sneak away to eat. Just a tiny mouthful of any of these is enough to transport me back to the safe, secure haven of my school days.

I only have to plop one oversized, overflowing puchhka in my mouth to be transported back to my days in Calcutta when we would stand at the balcony for hours waiting for our favourite vendor to come trotting by (there was just something about his water mix!). Unfortunately, I have never found a puchhkawalla to match his skills in all the years since.

There’s nothing that makes me obsess more about food, though, than being on a diet. That’s when I begin to dream about such high-calorie treats as a greasy biryani, a creamy risotto, fluffy puris, full-fat ice-cream, baked cheesecake, and icy-cold magnums of champagne.

Ah, champagne! There’s nothing quite like a bit of bubbly to elevate an utterly ordinary meal into a memorable occasion. In fact, Sunday brunch at a fancy restaurant never seems quite right without copious quantities of champagne (or Prosecco or any other sparkling wine). There is just something so celebratory about the loud pop as the bottle is opened, the hiss of the wine as it hits the glass, the frothy bubbles that always threaten to spill over and stain the table-cloth, and that first sip that hits the roof of your mouth with memories of great meals past.

Ah, happy days!