Sabr ka Fal Meetha Hota Hai

On 24 March 2020, I had a dream about you. I distinctly remember because you never looked so tempting, I never saw you the way I have seen you before that particular night. You were surrounded by a halo that uplifted you to the position of the divine. How your body was folded, felt like poetry- the one with a lot of elegance and graciousness. The vapors, marker of your hotness, made you nothing less but irresistible. Just like a fallen leaf from the mother tree, a part of you fell on the plate while maintaining the silence in the hustle-bustle of the market. That glowing pale skin, greased with butter has freckles of chilly flakes on it. Just like any other day, that night you were accompanied by three of your best friends, the sour one- green chutney or dip; the one with all the hotness- the legendary momos wali chutney or the red dip; and the sweetest of all- mayonnaise.

Figure 1: The Paneer momos (self-captured image)

Although, paneer is something I usually run away from but you are certainly the only paneer thing that I eat, dear paneer momos. This sudden sharpness of the memory, to an extent of remembering minute details about the dream, is because of the waiting and the desperation that kept me away from you, for months, because of the nation-wide lockdown due to this pandemic. In despair and anguish, I did try to become your birth giver but failed miserably as my carvings were never served with perfection. It never tasted like the way bhaiya made in the shop named Khana Khazana (in my local market, Delhi). But, for everyone around me, the momos that I made were surely a delight for them as it felt that we were stuck in the cage and were compromising our freedoms, even if it was for our good.

Figure 2: Experiment with the culinary skill: Home-made momos (self-captured image)

Finally, in the fourth month, after the lockdown, my two little sisters and I secretly did a mission called “Mission chilly chilly” at our terrace, hiding it from our parents and neighbors like family. Certainly, our households had much more rigid and strict guidelines as compared to perhaps the organization WHO. All of us selected one dish for ourselves that included noodles, chilly potato, and paneer momos. Just like any undercover agent, we protected our identities from the surroundings while executing the process of disposal of the garbage. After coming up to a consensus, we three again divided our roles, where one of my sisters and I had to guard until and unless our youngest sister came back after throwing the packets in the dustbin of that particular shop. But I need to confess something even after eating all these things I didn’t feel satisfied… it did not pacify my soul.

Figure 3: Bringing the Noodles and Chilly potato as a part of “mission chilly chilly” (self-captured image)

I finally hit the triumph when I stood in front of the shop, kept the plate on the dancing round table, asked for the chutney two two-three times more, allowed my tear to fell off my eye because of some real struggles with the spices, leaving the prints of my fingers on the Biselari, picking up tissues recklessly in one go to clean the mouth and hands with a pinch of sophistication, and finally asking the shopkeeper: Kitna Hua bhaiya? even after having the menu at my fingertips.