Measured in Meals

Because sometimes healing tastes like a wholesome meal

I have spent a significant portion of my life eating, thinking about or watching food. Something about morsels, be they humble or extravagant, has drawn me in like no good book, no great company or no escape ever could. And if you don’t know what I’m talking about, try getting hold of your most delightful meal after a busy day, sitting alone with it, freshly showered, with nobody but good content to consume.

 It truly takes you to what the internet has now termed as “flow state”; a concept originally coined by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi as “the peak of human consciousness,” describing a feeling in which, under the right conditions, you become fully immersed in whatever you are doing. Today, thanks to the internet, the term has expanded to include everything from a soulful plate of food to starting a new season of your favourite show on a Saturday.

And why not? If a plate of tempura maki or a good ol’ butter chicken thali can do for you what even a therapy session sometimes cannot, nothing should stop you from indulging in it. A good meal and therapy cost about the same anyway. But perhaps it is more than what meets the eye when it comes to food and I. 

Sometimes it's about the laughter that erupts over a spread, reminiscing of how I, for example, would lick my entire tiffin in school as a 10-year old to prevent others from asking for it (I HATE SHARING MY FOOD; NEVER ASK FOR IT); my very own pre-emptive Joey Tribbiani phase that I never got out of. Or how I am a hard-core lover of non-vegetarian dishes but steer clear of the devout combination of egg and chicken altogether because of the time I got sick on a train ride gorging on egg-chicken noodles. Or how I romanticise eating noodles with my hand because I saw Shah Rukh Khan do the same as a child in “Ra. One” — the science-fiction fantasy that, if we’re being honest, was certainly not intended to impart culinary skills

Then comes being a college student. The ultimate phase of life when eating unsatisfactory meals and adjusting to what is available becomes everyone’s forte. The glamour fades quickly. The butter chicken thalis turn into plastic trays of desolate food, the tempura maki into Maggi at 2 a.m., stretched with whatever vegetables are left in the fridge. You learn the art of compromise. Extra chutney to mask dryness, excessive ketchup to resurrect stale fries, cold coffee strong enough to convince you it counts as dinner. 

And yet, that is the beauty of college, or perhaps simply of the friends you make there, food refuses to become ordinary. It turns into comfort, and somehow, into community. I made my first friend in college over a bowl of “crispy peri-peri chicken rice bowl” from California Burrito that she offered to share. From there came the midnight Swiggy splits, where everyone claimed to be broke but still quietly added dessert to the cart (a big fat bowl of tiramisu, if we’re being precise here). From there came the time where we collectively uncaved the menus of Bistro, Snacc and the likes of all possible quick-delivery food services that were available past a sane man’s sleeping hours. 

Food in college stops being about indulgence and starts becoming about survival,– emotional, academic and financial. You eat to celebrate submissions. You eat to cope with bad grades. You eat because you are bored. You eat because you are alive or simply because you “accidentally” opened Swiggy and that one dish looked way too appetising to resist at 3 a.m. I mean, you don’t just stumble upon Zepto cafe every other day unless you’re doom scrolling till dawn. 

But it is not just that. Maybe under the relentless hustle of college, in between passionate arguments about whose hometown is better and who has better food (it is always that one Delhi friend being the loudest), you begin to realise that maybe, it was food that connected you before anything else did. 

You realise that the first proper conversation you managed to sneak-in, in between the formal hi’s and hello’s and the shy “Do you smoke” happened all over a plate of food— in your pg’s or in your college canteen. That somewhere between bites and borrowed spoons, familiarity began. The awkwardness softened and the pauses felt less heavy when they were filled with chewing. 

And then you start knowing who orders what without asking. Who eats the fastest. Who always wants “just one bite” and ends up taking three. Whose love language is making eggs for breakfast. Who likes masala on the side with their dosa. Who pretends like they don’t care about you but will always offer to make a cup of filter coffee as the sun starts setting. Who wants company while eating. Who doesn’t like getting up when there’s food on their plate. Who stress-eats during exams and who forgets to eat entirely. Yes these details feel trivial, but no they are not. They become the small, unspoken archives of knowing someone.

It is, weirdly enough, easier to speak when your hands are occupied and your eyes are not forced to hold contact for too long, and maybe that is why people order food on their first dates and hangouts. Between sips and bites, vulnerability feels less daunting, and connection unfolds almost accidentally yet naturally. And that is the real power of food: it absorbs the pressure of beginnings. 

Looking back, I realise my life can almost be mapped through meals. Right from the ferociously guarded tiffin of a ten-year-old to the college nights where Swiggy felt like both a financial mistake and an emotional necessity. To all the rice bowls that turned into deeper friendships. None of it was ever really just about hunger. And that is why there’s an invisible string there. Between food and I. Because in every city, every phase, every version of yourself, isn't it food that has remained constant? 

So when I say I have spent a significant portion of my life eating, thinking about, or watching food, it was understanding that every plate carried a story, and in many ways, carried me.

After all, some people measure their lives in milestones.

I have measured mine in meals.