It is not easy to live in the remotest corner of a sleepy town if you are an ardent foodie. When I moved to my barely-on-the-map hometown as working from home became the norm, I was acutely aware of my impending lack of dining options. It took only a few months to be surfeited with the predictable sameness of home food and for the cravings to start. My beautifully obscure hometown was a stark contrast to the lively and bustling city that I had long considered home. A city known for its insanely growing range of food outlets where every weekend a trip to a new restaurant ensued with food-loving friends and colleagues.
When I set out on a quest to find the best food in my town, I started with the not-so-fast food serving local restaurants first. The menu as expected was very uninspiring and the food even more so. No aspect of the craving was satisfied. So, these restaurants were immediately scratched off the list. Next came the home messes that sell homemade food limited edition style. There is a huge influx of people during rush hour with the streets lined up with parked cars as food gets sold out within the hour. One gets to buy the softest and fluffiest appams and idiyappams, homemade sambhar, chutneys and gravies. The home food messes came very close to satisfying the cravings but what they did not provide was the consistency and reliability of the eating out experience. Next on list was the local thattu kadai. The food, needless to mention was very tasty, but just like anything that promises instant gratification, the appeal was lost too soon — soon as the thattu kadai visits proved costly with the stomach upsets that came the following day.
One evening, at the dining table, as I was stating my sad predicament to my family, my dad made a seemingly weird suggestion
“Have you tried the mess at Holy Cross?”
“Holy — what?”
“It is the hospital where we took mum when she fell sick last year. They have a tiny canteen with decent food.”
I honestly thought he was joking. But there I was, the very next day, taking off in my scooter to go to a local hospital, to try as it were — a last attempt to find decent food in this town. At the small and unassuming canteen, I ordered egg dosai and chicken curry and some tea to follow. When the food arrived and I took the first bite, I was teleported back to early 1990s to my paati’s house. Me, my sister and cousin brothers were all seated on red terracotta tiled floor of Ramani paati’s house; we stretched out our plates one by one as she emerged from the kitchen with a fresh batch of dosais. Then she would pour her red chutney on the side of our plates. The making of this chutney is ingrained in its very distinct rustic taste. It was not made in a normal mixer grinder, but was hand ground on a stone grinder that rested outside the kitchen. The chutney at Holy Cross was like a tiny time-capsule of memories that exploded into nostalgia as soon as it hit my taste buds.
In the following days, the Holy Cross canteen became a regular excuse to step outside the house after long hours spent in front of the laptop. The waiters at the mess became familiar with me and my ‘usual’. They would ask me where I had been if they didn’t see me for a few days in a row. I think this is how you truly integrate as a local in a small town, when you find a regular place to eat at and where the waiters recognise you. I would occasionally get to know people who would eat there when one of their loved one was admitted at the hospital. I would stop seeing them after a couple of days and would reckon that their relative might have gotten discharged.
Discovering the Holy Cross canteen marked the end of my food quest. It was reasonable to conclude that my hometown simply did not have anything exceptional to offer, food-wise. However, it also brought me to the realisation that my cravings were not for exceptional food as much as it was for the sight of new faces, as much as it was for the need for a place to frequent, as much as it was for a need to be seen and acknowledged and remembered, as much as it was a need to disconnect from the screens, as much as it was to not lose connection to the real world and its real people.
