Eating Adventures

The other day while I was sipping my tea, I remembered how we caught my daughter draining her glass of milk down the sink, actually it was her father who caught her in the act. It was funny & amusing, but we surely couldn't show our true emotions before her. We had to play the parents & give her the "lecture", & make her feel guilty about her Baaad act. Like she cared. She too must have played along, standing before us head hanging down, listening to the lecture. probably wanting to laugh away, but pretending to be ashamed of her action, because thats what we were trying to make her feel. I was like "Oh my dear, how could you". Im sure at the back of her head head she must have been thinking, " Well why try to give me this white liquid turned chocolatey in colour & flavour, when you all know I JUST HATE IT". We shall know that only after she reads this & posts her comment.

Well I can't say I was a good example myself, I mean though I never needed to pour any liquid down the sink, but I did quite a bit of shooting eatables out of the window along with my sister. Yeah we all did that sometime in our childhood, & the memories of those eventful times only make us feel good about those happy innocent days. We loved milk, plain, sweet, flavoured, hot, cold, any form, as long as it is milk, its for me, We still do, its the best among God's creations. But there were other foodstuff that we just hated, among fruits was a long list, papayas, melons, ugh, I still hate them, whats that stink, & some people just love it just for that stink. Mom & Bapi used to very lovingly buy them for us during summers, peel them, cut them into small pieces, soak them in sugar to & serve them to us, while we very unwillingly put them into our mouths & somehow gulp them down our gullets. Next came the puking & throwing up session which only added to Mom's already busy schedule, & soon they realized papaya & melons are not for us. We girls parents made peace with the situation. But parents are parents, so in came the grapes, no problem with that, just that those days seedless grapes were rare. Grapes are not the problem, taste wise. Its only that when you put one nice shiny smooth grape in your mouth, & bite it, boom it explodes & out comes the little seed, & that we always hated, & so eating grapes were out. Other fruits were not hateful but more or less boring. Pomegranates, custard apples, boring! Guavas, either hard when raw, & soft when ripe, too many seeds, so thats out, I can go on & on with the list, so to conclude bananas & mangoes were the only ones that were more than welcome, while oranges , & sweetlimes, as long as Mom & Dad made juices out of them fine, welcome, with lots of added sugar to enhance them further. Pineapples, good when soaked in sugar. They also took a lot of trouble making a fruit salad, thinking when all the fruits are mixed, it will become a power house of nutrition & energy, plus we would not have the patience to select each fruit out & throw or swallow. This was mostly a Sunday thing, when Dad was at home, & he declared to Mom, "Why won't they eat the fruit salad, I shall see to it that they eat it all". Mom knew only too well, after all she dealt with us everyday, well Dad so be it.

My younger sister had an amazing aim, shooting bits & pieces of foodlings from the farthest part of the room through the grill, & out into the garden, right under Dad's nose, because he was already dipped in his sketching or a book. I got my training from this little sister of mine. We used to stuff the unwanted fruits under our tongue & cheeks, and wait for the right moment to smuggle them into our fists and casually walk away & then out of the window. We also knew the art of spitting far into infinity the stored up fruits from our mouths. It was fun to see the birds flock in one particular place down below in the compound later, & we knew how far we have practiced spitting the fruit game.

Like I said milk was fine, the best, but there too was a problem. We were served milk in huge glass bowls, because thats how much we loved having it, yet there were milky disasters almost everyday. While the milk was set down , either some fly fell into it, or one of us knocked the bowl down spilling the whole contents, while playing or wrestling. A bit of scolding & punishing by Mom, & again another bowl of milk, this time to be gulped down right in front of her. The amazing thing was that this situation was almost an everyday affair, but Mom never gave up.

We sisters had become experts in shooting stuff out of the window. Being Bongs fish & meat were a part of our staple food, & yes we hated them. Parents always want to provide their children with the best of nutrition for all round growth, & our parents were no different. So every Sunday was challenge at the dining table with Mom serving us generous helping of the day's non veg food & warning us to not try any tricks. We on our part never gave up, so when Mom fed us a morsel, as usual we safely kept the morsel comfortably under our tongue & cheeks, pretending to chew & also gulp at the same time. No we never swallowed even a teeny weeny bit, we were that good. The strategy was waste as much time as you can, when the parents finish & leave the table, smuggle the morsels out of your mouths & under our plates, well hidden by the rim of the plates. Next check how near or close the parents are & then one, two, three & shoot out. You must be wondering how come Mom & Dad never noticed our swelled up cheeks, simple, we were very good, & they were too trusting.

It didn't end there, our tiffin boxes were also not spared, not because we disliked what Mom always packed in our tiffin boxes, but we never got to finush eating the breakfast she packed, it was the syndrome of all chit chatting & slow eating, & before long the recess was over. Sometimes we ate in the school bus while returning home, but most of the time we used to forget. So whats the solution? Before we went upstairs the left overs were down the elevator shaft. Once Mom caught us. It so happened that she was waiting for the lift on the ground floor, after her evening walk, & she happened to glance down in the hollow of the lift shaft & saw the eatables down there. She wondered, "Who could have done this, it the kind of stuff I pack for my kids in their breakfast everyday at school. Oh wait, no they didn't", BUSTED. Now what, lift shaft was out. Here came in the many stray dogs in our society building. They were just too good, the generous ones just ate clean whatever we gave them. Actually these dogs had started getting quite healthy, all the food shots that came out of the window & the helpings that they got on our return from school, started making them quite healthy.

I guess discarding food stuff is quite normal, many kids must have tried it sometime, & its all because parents are simply anxious to see that their children get the best nutrition from all the food available out there, & children want to rebelliously have their own set of choices regarding their eating habits. Parents tend to not remember that children do have sense of taste & smell. At least my kid did, even when she was an infant. The pediactrician had given us some vitamin, iron & folic acid drops, when we left for home with the new human being from the nursing home. We never thought then that this little creature would be capable of asserting her chopice of what goes down her throat or not. The vitamin C & folic acid drops were just too good & she used to stick her tongue out for more even after we finushed giving her the daily dose. It was the iron drops that she showed dislike to. At first whenever she saw that particular bottle ready to drop its contents into the spoon for her, she used to wrestle her hands & legs to kock it over, when pinned down, she would refuse to open her mouth, then we forced her to open her mouth by holding her nose so she had to let go. We thought, yeah baby, we adults always win. But what were we thinking. She was just 15 days old, & one day she did not resist at all, yep she readily submitted to us, let us pour the hateful stuff into her mouth, we all were happy, I the most, I taught my kid her first lesson, Mom knows the best & you must be obedient. After about ten minutes or so, i came to feed her & found some yellowish stuff rolling out from the corner of her mouth & the baby happily kicking about watching the colourful photograph of the bright red flower on the wall. The tiny creature had just pretended to gulp the medicine, but all the time had stored it in her throat, only to spit it out a little at a time when we were not around. I then knew, here was a challenge who would make less noise & work more, most of the time unnoticed.

This kid grew up soon into a cute pretty little girl. Her school was a whole day affair, & so i was paranoid enough to see that atleast she eats a proper breakfast before she leaves for school. I felt if I never fed her the lunch, she wouldn't eat well, so compensate with the breakfast. After all its the main meal of the day. So here was a plate of omlette or a boiled egg & milk along with the nuts. All the stuff that my little girl hated, but all of them very necessary for her proper mental & physical growth. So the morning began with the daily scolding & bribing to make her eat, while she did her bit by puking to avoid eating all that was laid out. Sometimes she did throw up all that I very patiently managed to drown into her gullet. All the effort gone down the drain, & with the school bus almost at the door, there was no choice but to rush out.

One day while I packed her bag, I saw that her Omlette plate was empty & milk cup too. Ofcourse then I didn't yet discover the milk down the drain act. I also didn't notice that the omlette was crumbled & stuffed into her pocket, to throw away at a conveinient time later. What then, even after washing the uniform many times the eggy smell wouldn't go for a long time. Yeah we had to discard the outfit, & I stopped the breakfast of eggs & milk. It was just milk & the nuts used to go into her pocket to be eaten later, which never came. This habit still stays with her. Empty her bags & one can find nuts dating back to even two years. Once I even found a green something wrapped in a foil, in one of her college bag, that she wanted me to clean out for her. The young lady had kept her cheese sandwich once upon a time, when she was in college, & had happily forgotten about it, & not to forget the almost half kg nuts too from anothet of her bags, all from her college days. They had holes in them, a sign that insects had made the nuts their nest. But these were all when my little girl was already a young lady, i was still telling all about her childhood eating pranks, so lets go back to those days again.

This was when she was a little older, I used to go to fetch her from the campus gate as the walk to our block was a long one, & the weight of the books, plus lunch bag and all, & a tired hungry exhausted child of mine, made it very heart wrenching for me. Then one day my kiddo told me that she was a big girl now & can manage it all on her own, as none of her other school mates had their momies waiting for them at the campus gate. Ofcourse I wouldn't want to embarass my baby anymore so I stopped the practice. I used to wait at the window. My kiddo came all the way, right upto our block, all she had to do was climb up two floors & voila, home, within five to seven minutes. But what was this, she was taking more time to come upstairs than the walk from the gate to our block, almost everyday, why? So one day I just went down, and not seeing her around, I went at the back of the block & she was there, all surprised. When I asked her, she said she was trying a hide & seek with me. I wasn't really convinced, after all it was a been there done that thingy, & I kinda smelt something, so another day I went again, this time very carefully, & caught her throwing her left over lunch to the dogs that stayed behind our block. Yes yes as you sow, so shall you reap. We did that & now my little one did too, no I never told her about us, but these are instincts & they get expressed at the right point of time. I wanted to laugh, but had to show her how very not happy I was, & that this was unexpected from a good child like her.

Did it help, not really, she had surely found out other tricks, she hasn't told me yet, but she sure will some day, like how we share with our Mom now. She takes it with a great sense of houmor, now, had she known about it all back then, we would have been grounded. But now we all sit together & have a good laugh.