Sunny side up

Who is to say that breakfast should only be eaten in the morning?

There is nothing I love more about hotels than a room-service breakfast. It seems so wonderfully decadent to lie in bed, with a plate of French toast (or eggs and bacon; waffles; aloo parathas; medhu vadas; you can choose your own poison) balanced precariously on your pristine white sheets, a cup of coffee with easy reach, and the newspaper crinkling crisply as you turn the pages. I can’t think of a better way to start the day.

Or, indeed, to end it. Because, seeing that they are on to a good thing, some hotels have started to serve breakfast around the clock. So now, if you are so inclined, you can both start the day with a hearty breakfast and then end it with yet another slap-up breakfast. (And yes, I often do.)

Hoteliers will tell you that the round-the-clock breakfast menu is meant for jet-lagged travellers who have flown across time zones and have such screwed-up body clocks that they want the comfort eating epitomized by a good breakfast no matter what time they check in. But I know better. The truth is that they have put breakfast on the round-the-clock menu because it has such scrumptious options that it seems a shame to restrict them to just one meal of the day.

And who made up these stupid rules anyway? About how you can only eat certain things for breakfast and others for lunch and dinner? If you ask me, it makes no sense. Anything that tastes good first thing in the morning will taste just as good last thing at night. To misquote Shakespeare, a blueberry pancake would taste just as sweet if you ate it at 8 am or 8 pm. So, who’s to say that it is best served with your morning tea or coffee? For that matter, why can’t you have a bowl of crunchy muesli with milk for dinner rather than breakfast without being seen as a bit of an eccentric? Or even a full English fry up of eggs, baked beans, sausages, hash browns and toast?

It’s not just breakfast options, though. How about tea-time treats? Why should they only be reserved for the evening? A couple of crisp samosas or a plateful of pakoras (or bhajias or whatever you call them in your part of the world) with some spicy chutneys on the side would make for a delightful lunch or even dinner. So why do we always eat them as snacks or ‘naashta’ rather than at meal times?

Part of it, of course, is down to social conditioning. More often than not what you eat and when you eat it is a cultural thing. For instance, in Italy, salad is served at the end of the meal rather than at the beginning. So instead of stuffing yourself full of greens at the start of the meal and feeling too full to enjoy your main course, you relish your main dish, and then cleanse your palate with a salad dressed with olive oil and a dash of balsamico so that you can truly appreciate the cheese and dessert to follow.

Makes much more sense, doesn’t it? And yet, for some reason, when you eat out in India, you are always served the salad first and then the main. Result: by the time the dessert is served, you are far too sated to really enjoy it. (Now don’t be a spoilsport and say that that’s just as well; you know as well as I do that it’s the high point of the meal.)

Talking of dessert, why is it taken as a given that it will be served at the end of the meal rather than at the beginning? Why is ice-cream presented to us as a reward if we are good little children and finish our greens first? Why does chocolate cake have to wait until the cheese has been cleared to make an appearance? Yes, I know that delayed gratification is supposed to be good for you, but you are talking about chocolate cake here!

Some people have the right idea though. Some years ago, I ate at a restaurant called Ente Keralam in Chennai and was surprised to be offered a sweet as the beginning of the meal. Chef Reji Mathew explained that in his Syrian Christian community, it was usual to start a feast with a sweet rather than a savoury dish to prepare the palate for the treats to come. And I have to say that it worked like a charm.

So now, after many decades of following the dictates of of

od fascists, I have decided that when it comes to eating there is only one rule: that there are no rules. Or better still, that you get to make your own rules as you go along.

If you feel like having a bread and butter pudding for breakfast, go right ahead (nutritionists will tell you that this is the best time to have high-calorie sweet treats, anyway). If you fancy an almond croissant and not much else for dinner, that’s fine too. And if you want to have breakfast at all three meals of the day, dig in. Bon appetit!

Raindrops keep falling...

In India we love the rain about as much as the British detest it

I was in London a couple of weeks ago and all the talk – rather predictably, I guess, given the British predilection for discussing the weather – was about how the rains were going to make a complete wash-out of September. The summer was effectively over, according to the weather forecasters, from now on it was going to be rain all the way.

The sadness and disappointment was almost palpable, as everyone agreed glumly that it was time to put away those sundresses and shorts and bring out the brollies and boots (not that you can ever quite put them away in England, which is famous for showing you all four seasons in the course of a single day). The days of balmy sunshine were over; from now on it was going to be wet, wet, wet.

As I nodded along sympathetically at my English friends, I couldn’t help marvelling at the very different attitude we in India have to the rain. We long for it during the long summer months when temperatures climb into the stratosphere. We count the days down to the arrival of the monsoon on our shores. We get rather stroppy if it doesn’t arrive on time. We measure every inch of rain to make sure that we have got our entire annual quota. We keep a jealous eye out for other cities, which may have got a little more of the downpour. And a bad monsoon can make us very bad-tempered indeed (not least because of its effect on our economy).

Oh yes, we love the rain – about as much as the Brits abhor it. You could well say that this is because those poor souls have too much of good thing, with it drizzling down every single day (at least, it certainly feels that way). And because we have to suffer through a long, hot, dusty summer, we long for the relief that the rains bring with them.

In a sense, perhaps, for our new-fangled urban ways, we are still an agricultural people at heart. And the sight of rain is an indication that we will have a good harvest this year. Remember the rain song in Lagaan, as the whole village turns out to celebrate the advent of the first monsoon showers in the village?

In India, our attitude to the rain is much like that of a small child looking out eagerly for a much-awaited treat – and then jumping with joy when it finally arrives. No matter how old you are, if you are an Indian, there is a certain sense of joy and abandon attached to the rains.

As a kid I remember stripping down to my chemise and underwear and heading straight up the terrace when the first rainstorm hit. All the children of the neighbourhood would congregate here, yelling and screaming with excitement, as they were soaked to the skin in the downpour. And once enough rain had accumulated in puddles, we would make little paper boats and sail them, having impromptu competitions to see which one of them lasted the longest in the water.

Even now that I am all grown up, there is still something irresistible about the idea of going for a walk in the rain, quite unprotected by an umbrella or a raincoat. Nothing quite matches the feel of rain water as it drops down in tiny droplets on your head or streams down your face or even gathers around your shoes making them squelch so satisfactorily.

This probably explains why rains are such a staple of romance in India – both in real life and in the movies. Young lovers walk along the beach in Juhu as it pelts down; honeymooners book themselves a cottage in Goa during the monsoons; and Hindi film heroines all the way from Mumtaz to Sridevi to Katrina obligingly slip into see-through chiffon saris before dancing in the rain with their co-stars.

Of course, it’s not all about young love alone. Rains have a special significance for families as well. Some of them drive down to the seaside or by a lake to watch the rain come down. Others hunker down to play indoor games like antakshari or dumb charades. Some spend time listening to the many songs that celebrate the season. And then there are those who make the most of rainy days by snuggling down in bed with a good book and a piping hot cup of tea (much as the English would make the most of sunny days by basking in the garden, with a glass of gin and tonic or a tumbler of Pimms within reach).

Needless to say, a whole school of cuisine has been built around the monsoons. In the north, the first sign of showers has the matriarch of the house setting on a pan of oil to deep-fry some pakoras. In Bengal, the rain is the signal to cook some khichuri with lots of ghee floating on top. In Gujarat, it’s time for some daal vada with chillies and salted onions for added oomph. And in Maharashtra, they bring on the gavati chaha (grass tea) and sabudana vadas.

As for me, the rains are just the perfect excuse to take a day off, sit well back on the balcony, and simply watch the sky pour down. The cup of tea is strictly optional though I wouldn’t say no to pakoras if anyone asked me nicely.