Breakfast is a quintiessential problem whenever I
travel.Eating Geeta bai’s alu-parathas hot off the pan is a healing process.She
always stuffs in extra bit of potato and coriander and it is heaven with tomato
sauce,I am not sure of the health benefits of it all .While in Bhopal the
timing for breakfast of eight-fifteen in the morning in the pastoral centre was
a tad too late because I had to go across the city to speak in a student’s
conference.At seven thirty, I started
walking the roads in search of breakfast. A Haldiram’s was open and suggested I
wait out another fifteen minutes for the hot samosas and kachoris .I was not
tempted at the thought of the dripping oil.
I hardly walked a hundred yards when I spotted teenagers in
ones and twos eating something out of paper pages with a spoon.I walked up and there were these
huge utensils with a hill of poha .Ten rupees per plate, enough and more for
your breakfast.I bought it,relished it and I had this secret joy of having had
a phenomenal breakfast for ten rupees.
Before I discovered poha, egg bhurji and parantha used to be
my favourite north Indian -mission breakfast.In the south when in Oddanchattram I loved the breakfast.Shravana
Bhawan breakfast used to be after my own heart.However,there was one particular
breakfast which seldom went down my throat .My cousin, in his book, has labeled
it ‘the poison ‘you put on the table when you want your mother in law to make
her stay as short as possible’.Yes it is ‘puttu’.I am yet to develop a taste
for it and I guess I never will.
I was not a breakfast eater but with time I am beginning to
watch my body clock more closely and am beginning to understand what anybody
and everybody keeps chanting,-’you need to eat your breakfast,it is good for
you.’
I often find myself saying it to all and sundry who will
give me an ear . I say it with conviction now.
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