[Memory Lane]

Food habits

Though Samadhi and I are good buddies, we have entirely different food habits. She is a strict vegetarian and I’m a non-vege. Wherever we go we always face this awkward problem, with Samadhi being a vegetarian.

Of course she is not that fussy about food like me but then again, most of the places do not offer vege stuff. I remember one day Samadhi was dying to have something sweet and I suggested that she go for an ice cream, while I had already decided on a cake. Sometimes she can get really stubborn and this was such a time, she wanted to have a cake but without the eggs in it!

Phew, now from where the hell am I to find a cake without eggs? Imagine the plight I was in and luckily for me the manageress of the restaurant who is also a friend of ours came to our table. I knew that only she could pull me out of this dilemma and imagine when she said, they have eggless cake. Well, actually that was the day I found out that there are cakes without eggs.

So eventually, we both settled down to a delicious piece of cake and whenever we go across to this particular restaurant, Samadhi looks around for the famous ‘eggless cake’. It’s easy for Anuki to say. I am a vegetarian and most of the time I can’t eat icecream because I have either a sore throat or tonsilitis.

So, that day the manageress was kind enough to get me a piece of the eggless cake, which was put on display, free of charge! And when Anuki cannot force-feed me with cake or an icecream out of pity.

Anuki would feel guilty and wouldn’t want to have the dessert alone. So on one such day she asked one of the guys in the restaurant whether they would cut the eggless cake for me. But the guy said that he couldn’t and as an afterthought added that all cakes have eggs in them.

“Even this one has a little bit of egg in it.” he said. You can imagine how I felt, because I had already had a slice earlier. I yelled out, “What? it has EGGS in it!” and the whole lot in the restaurant turned and looked at us, while Anuki tried - to no avail - to hush me down.

Enough about me. At least the habits I have, are not bad for health. But what about Anuki? The guys at the restaurant actually opened the bottle - of this particular soft drink she’s in love with - before she picks her seat at the restaurant table. She has one of those yucky, tasting bottles every single day. I don’t know how she even drinks one of those, every day, let alone love it.

The doctors had strictly advised her not to because she had been interned a couple of times due to her allergic reactions to the yucky drink. But she never took up their advice. Every time she takes a sip of that drink, she lets out a very satisfied ‘A...hhh’, just to irritate me, perhaps. I sometimes wonder whether she actually loves the drink more than she loves her boyfriend!

She can even go for an entire day without water and food, without grumbling, but not her beloved soft drink.