Ammu has started her yearly jaunt to master the skill of piloting a gasoline propelled body with four circular extremities, used as a mode of daily transportation. Yes, it is that time of the year folks - the time to keep everyone safe at home - Ammu has started driving lessons. And to keep up with the other traditions of this festival, I've started my own ritual of having food from restaurants for most of my meals this week.
You see, with lessons in the morning, she leaves home early, so that she can reach office on time after the class. Since I'm predisposed to all my meals being served hot, I'm left to my own devices to materialize something edible from the dosa maavu. And it is a standing ovation to my culinary skills that I've had breakfast from a nearby Vegetarian hotel for five days running. Hence, during the special week, breakfast has been switched from dosas at home to dosas at Aryas. (P. S. Why is every other veg hotel named so?)
Coming to the similar matter of lunch, like many of you, I prefer to have my lunch being something which was not cooked and packed 5 hours ago. But unlike most of my colleagues, I eschew the office cafeteria and visit the Punjab House on Broadway (two minutes from my office at Menaka) for some tasty and authentic, yet sanely priced Aloo parathas. Hence, during the special week, lunch maintained its status quo.
Dinner for the weekdays were as follows : Steamed Tapioca with Ammu's special chutney(at home), Steak (meeting a friend after two months), Grilled Chicken (as the same friend came over), Rice soup (at home). Yes, I prefer my rice to be stewing in its own broth, than being drowned in a sea of spices and vegetables. So, the score was evenly poised at 2-2, as we arrived at the Seventh day of September 2018, the Friday that just was.
Eat Kochi Eat is an amazing group of people who go about Kochi and let the world know about the amazing food available at various places. It so happened that they had put up a post on Rahmaniya Kethel's Chicken, which had the two of us scheming as to when to attack the place. What we failed to comprehend was that the same "scheming" was done by a lot of people - the people who had seen the same post as us.
Which brings us to the night of the same day, where the protogonaist duos of our story - hungry as hell - were unable to find a space to park with 500m of the place, let alone get anywhere near the queue formed outside the restaurant.
This was one of those moments in my life, where hindsight epiphanies from a hard lesson taught me what a simple forethought could have.
Lesson No 2: Never visit a restaurant in a hurry, especially when it has just been given a promotion on social media.
Lesson No 1: Try Uber/Swiggy First.
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WHY I PREFER EATING FOOD FROM OUTSIDE AT HOME??
[aka Why I have food delivered?]
1. Provides Jobs.
When food is cooked at my home, it employs only two people. And since they already have other jobs, this one is not of the paying kind for them. But if I eat roti from outside, I'm helping in making sure that some figurative rotis reach some homes.
2. Saves resources.
The best way to save resources is by making optimum utilization of the same. And that is achieved to a larger extent by consolidating the end use. So, eating food from outside helps in saving resources.
3. Saves time and money.
Compared to the home delivery concept, the act of dressing up, fighting traffic to get to the place, finding a parking space, getting a table, having the food, coming back home fighting traffic again - all with the chance of getting sidetracked into shopping - taxes your time and money.
Now onto the real reason why I gave these flimsy excuses.
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I know people who are committed to home cooked food. Those who have grown up in such an environment will presume that this is the normal order of society. If they are not willing to adapt/alter themselves based on new information, they will look at the world with a prejudice that will place me on the wrong side of natural law, as far as they are concerned.
So when I'm having food from outside, the fact that there is no direct/indirect discomfort to them is irrelevant. Their presumed notion of social order is broken, and hence they feel irked by it. They might respond by reprimanding or shaming me. That is not okay. And it has to stop.
A step towards stopping such prejudiced behaviour was taken by our Supreme Court this week. Beating the depreciating Rupee and the appreciating Petrol to the punch of the week is the order which states that "Being Gay in India is not a criminal offense."
But just decriminalizing is not enough. The first battle has been won, but the war is still on. And for them to walk with pride, we must bury our prejudice.
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As for what we did when we couldn't get into the place of our choice on Friday, we went to a nearby restaurant and had some parotta & that thing which caused the floods in Kerala. And during the special week, Hotels edged out Home food by 3-2 for dinner.
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