Weighty inheritance
My father lost his battle with food the day he was born. His mother was a person of ample proportions and loved cooking. She had been married off as a young girl to a scholarly and ascetic Gandhian who had taken a lifelong vow to eat vegetarian food and wear nothing but coarse handspun cloth. There was no question that his new bride would have to live life in accordance with the same strictures. So, along with nice clothes and gold jewellery, she had to give up fish, something that had been part of her daily diet. That must have been when she took to cooking elaborate vegetarian meals, fried delicacies and a variety of rich sweets with a vengeance. Fish and meat were forbidden in their house, but there were no restrictions on milk, butter, oil, sugar. In fact, if memory serves me right, the children would be served chunks of butter with their meals (to keep up them healthy) and would hide it under their plates when they didn't want to eat it. All vegetables were fried - before they went into curries, after they were stuffed and battered, or just served plain with dal. Any vegetables that escaped frying, would be mashed with generous quantities of pungent mustard oil. Seven of the nine children took after their mother. So while my grandfather, frowning on excesses of any kind, ate minute portions and remained lean all his life, my dad and most of his siblings grew up to be fat people.
Growing up, I never had a pantry full of snacks like other kids. Their moms would fill glass jars with savory murrukus or sweet swirly pastry dipped in sugar and hand them out to visiting kids. My house was embarrasingly devoid of toothsome goodies. All we had were boring meals where a detested mixed vegetable curry (which I love now) made a regular appearance. To be fair to my mother, we did have the occasional "different" dinner. There were three of them - upma and boiled egg, fried chicken and french fries, fried fish cutlets also with french fries (I think). The other different thing that showed up was boiled peas and potatoes with salt, pepper, butter when I was sick and didn't feel like eating. Rose cookies are something I remember from my early childhood - standing in the sunshine outside the kitchen, savoring one ring at a time (once a crow snatched it away mid-bite); my mother never made those after we moved to Kolkata. It was only later that I realized that my mother's aversion to housewifely arts, such as cooking and sewing, was not the only reason we were deprived of snacks. She was trying hard to make sure that my dad only had access to healthy food at home. Alas, all her efforts came to nought.
For one, my dad enjoyed cooking. He would be in the kitchen late at night or early in the morning cooking up huge quantities of some kichudi like thing, rice and beans. My mother would grumble often, "He made this huge pot full of stuff and this morning, it's all gone!" Other women, whose husbands had never even seen the inside of a kitchen, would say, "You're so lucky, your husband is a doctor and he even cooks!" My mother would mutter, "It's not very helpful if he doesn't cook what I need and when I need it." She forbore to add that he also ate most of what he cooked. That was just at home. In other people's houses, in a culture where food is love, my mother's battle was lost before it began. Even his own sisters would coax more and more helpings of whatever special dish they had made on my dad. That irked my mother the most. His sisters were supposed to care about his wellbeing. I guess my mom forgot that they too had been raised in the same home where the fat flowed freely; they probably saw her as a killjoy.
Unfortunately for my mother's lifelong mission, there was more food outside the house than in other people's houses. Kolar, where her married life began, was a walkable / bikeable small town with very few stores, a friendly environment for a person trying to foster a healthy lifestyle. But Kolkata, in comparison, was the devil's own realm. There was temptation in the form of sweet shops around every corner in the big city. Those shops also sold shingaras, kochuris and other savouries. Then, with the economic liberalization of the country, the upper classes grew more prosperous and the number of fancy shopping centers, selling everything from packaged vegetables to high end consumer goods, exploded. New varieties of candy, cookies, cakes, chips and drinks joined traditional Indian favourites. Once my parents moved far away from the hospital, my dad no longer walked. A car and driver arrived to pick him up promptly at 6:30 in the morning and delivered him back to the house in the afternoon. Quite often, my father would come home with a bag from one of these shopping centers to my mother's grumbles.
There was a lot more to the whole story, though. We only found out most of it after my father died. He had been a well loved pediatrician for decades. He was known and respected as a (sometimes brutally) honest, somewhat eccentric person - someone who lived simply and, although a doctor, did not care to make money. (In the words of one of my uncles, my mother's youngest brother, he very stubbornly refused to be transformed from a medical man to a medical businessman). Naturally, many people visited, called, shared stories about my father. It was then that we learned that he had often been seen in restaurants or sweet shops after work, sitting and eating with his driver Pal babu. A young doctor, who worked with my father and had a very affectionate relationship with him, told us that she caught him hiding candy bars many times when she popped into his office unexpectedly. My little daughter, who found my dad scary and stayed away from him, nevertheless had a hidden bond with him; they both ate candy from a secret stash under his bed that the rest of us had no clue about. My husband talked about his surprise at the warm welcome he received at a food store when he went in with my dad, all the people at the counters knew daktar babu! I guess it was no surprise that the death certificate cited obesity as one of the causes.
My father's memorial service was well attended and suitably solemn. People extolled him with high praise and (maybe I'm biased but) in his case, all the things they said were true. My communist uncle, the aforementioned one, started out in the same vein and also got some capitalism bashing into his speech (which was not hard given that he was praising my dad for caring more about people than money). But then my uncle's speech went off the rails and, I would bet, left most of the audience bewildered. He said that, as a much younger brother-in-law, he had never taken liberties with my dad. But now that he was gone, he had a chance to make jokes at his expense. So he told this rambling story about an old couple that died in an accident and went to heaven together. Saint Peter welcomed then and led them to a luxurious car. The man said "Wait, how much will this cost?" Saint Peter said "No worries, this is heaven. The car is free." Then they were taken to a palatial house with all the comforts and conveniences one could imagine. The man was suspicious again and asked how much the house was going to cost him. Saint Peter again waved away his concerns and assured him that it was all free. The couple were then taken to the dining room where there was delicious food from all over the world, they could eat whatever and as much as they wanted. "How much is this?" asked the man. "Oh, nothing at all, it's free!" At that, the man jumped up, knocked down a chair and started yelling. He pointed a quivering finger at his wife, "This old woman! It's all her fault! Without her interference, I could have come here and had all this thirty years ago!". "I fear for my sister when she finally meets her husband in heaven", said my uncle. I don't know whether the implicit compliment in that story was any consolation to my mother.
Growing up, I never had a pantry full of snacks like other kids. Their moms would fill glass jars with savory murrukus or sweet swirly pastry dipped in sugar and hand them out to visiting kids. My house was embarrasingly devoid of toothsome goodies. All we had were boring meals where a detested mixed vegetable curry (which I love now) made a regular appearance. To be fair to my mother, we did have the occasional "different" dinner. There were three of them - upma and boiled egg, fried chicken and french fries, fried fish cutlets also with french fries (I think). The other different thing that showed up was boiled peas and potatoes with salt, pepper, butter when I was sick and didn't feel like eating. Rose cookies are something I remember from my early childhood - standing in the sunshine outside the kitchen, savoring one ring at a time (once a crow snatched it away mid-bite); my mother never made those after we moved to Kolkata. It was only later that I realized that my mother's aversion to housewifely arts, such as cooking and sewing, was not the only reason we were deprived of snacks. She was trying hard to make sure that my dad only had access to healthy food at home. Alas, all her efforts came to nought.
For one, my dad enjoyed cooking. He would be in the kitchen late at night or early in the morning cooking up huge quantities of some kichudi like thing, rice and beans. My mother would grumble often, "He made this huge pot full of stuff and this morning, it's all gone!" Other women, whose husbands had never even seen the inside of a kitchen, would say, "You're so lucky, your husband is a doctor and he even cooks!" My mother would mutter, "It's not very helpful if he doesn't cook what I need and when I need it." She forbore to add that he also ate most of what he cooked. That was just at home. In other people's houses, in a culture where food is love, my mother's battle was lost before it began. Even his own sisters would coax more and more helpings of whatever special dish they had made on my dad. That irked my mother the most. His sisters were supposed to care about his wellbeing. I guess my mom forgot that they too had been raised in the same home where the fat flowed freely; they probably saw her as a killjoy.
Unfortunately for my mother's lifelong mission, there was more food outside the house than in other people's houses. Kolar, where her married life began, was a walkable / bikeable small town with very few stores, a friendly environment for a person trying to foster a healthy lifestyle. But Kolkata, in comparison, was the devil's own realm. There was temptation in the form of sweet shops around every corner in the big city. Those shops also sold shingaras, kochuris and other savouries. Then, with the economic liberalization of the country, the upper classes grew more prosperous and the number of fancy shopping centers, selling everything from packaged vegetables to high end consumer goods, exploded. New varieties of candy, cookies, cakes, chips and drinks joined traditional Indian favourites. Once my parents moved far away from the hospital, my dad no longer walked. A car and driver arrived to pick him up promptly at 6:30 in the morning and delivered him back to the house in the afternoon. Quite often, my father would come home with a bag from one of these shopping centers to my mother's grumbles.
There was a lot more to the whole story, though. We only found out most of it after my father died. He had been a well loved pediatrician for decades. He was known and respected as a (sometimes brutally) honest, somewhat eccentric person - someone who lived simply and, although a doctor, did not care to make money. (In the words of one of my uncles, my mother's youngest brother, he very stubbornly refused to be transformed from a medical man to a medical businessman). Naturally, many people visited, called, shared stories about my father. It was then that we learned that he had often been seen in restaurants or sweet shops after work, sitting and eating with his driver Pal babu. A young doctor, who worked with my father and had a very affectionate relationship with him, told us that she caught him hiding candy bars many times when she popped into his office unexpectedly. My little daughter, who found my dad scary and stayed away from him, nevertheless had a hidden bond with him; they both ate candy from a secret stash under his bed that the rest of us had no clue about. My husband talked about his surprise at the warm welcome he received at a food store when he went in with my dad, all the people at the counters knew daktar babu! I guess it was no surprise that the death certificate cited obesity as one of the causes.
My father's memorial service was well attended and suitably solemn. People extolled him with high praise and (maybe I'm biased but) in his case, all the things they said were true. My communist uncle, the aforementioned one, started out in the same vein and also got some capitalism bashing into his speech (which was not hard given that he was praising my dad for caring more about people than money). But then my uncle's speech went off the rails and, I would bet, left most of the audience bewildered. He said that, as a much younger brother-in-law, he had never taken liberties with my dad. But now that he was gone, he had a chance to make jokes at his expense. So he told this rambling story about an old couple that died in an accident and went to heaven together. Saint Peter welcomed then and led them to a luxurious car. The man said "Wait, how much will this cost?" Saint Peter said "No worries, this is heaven. The car is free." Then they were taken to a palatial house with all the comforts and conveniences one could imagine. The man was suspicious again and asked how much the house was going to cost him. Saint Peter again waved away his concerns and assured him that it was all free. The couple were then taken to the dining room where there was delicious food from all over the world, they could eat whatever and as much as they wanted. "How much is this?" asked the man. "Oh, nothing at all, it's free!" At that, the man jumped up, knocked down a chair and started yelling. He pointed a quivering finger at his wife, "This old woman! It's all her fault! Without her interference, I could have come here and had all this thirty years ago!". "I fear for my sister when she finally meets her husband in heaven", said my uncle. I don't know whether the implicit compliment in that story was any consolation to my mother.
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