poor eating habits
and food is boring
Dear reader,
It is shocking that I managed to put together some thoughts on food. This edition isn’t half as terrible as I thought it might turn out to be. Hopefully, you’ll think the same.
A non-exhaustive list of things I love to eat:
Chicken fillet burger from Leon grill
Thayir sadam
Fish fry
Tomato chammanthi
Curd with rice water
Thinness
Buffets and weddings are a waste on me, I don’t go beyond the soups and salad section. Sometimes, when I’m really hungry, I feel an unreal level of confidence and fill up my plate with every item on the buffet. Two bites in, my stomach feels full and nauseous, making it impossible for me to look at the plate or continue eating.
Once, in sixth grade, one of my relatives forced me into finishing a plate of rajma-rice. “It’s not that difficult”, she insisted. About ten minutes after the forced gobbling, I was puking my gut out in the bathroom, while the rest of the family happily feasted on payasam for dessert.
This was a common occurring. In sixth grade, I was thin, darker than my sister, and had frizzy brown hair. Coconut oil was constantly prescribed to my hair by various aunts, and food was almost always served to me with the intention of bulking me up.
The wretched combination of motion sickness and being forced to eat meant that puking became a habit. Food, swiftly became the thing I failed at. I’ve poured my insides out on almost every bus-ride to school, every one hour long cab ride in Bangalore, every overnight AC bus trip. There was a casual-ness in my demeanour. I’d tell everyone I was used to this kind of thing, point to the barf bags in my bag, and sleep through the headaches and nausea.
In sixth grade, “thinness” as a privilege didn’t factor into my life. In fact, it largely furthered my invisibility – I was always young enough to be dismissed, soft enough to be spoken over, and thin enough to fit into the smallest corners of the room. It was only several years down the line – at the brink of puberty – that I began registering thinness as an “asset.”
Suddenly, I seemed to have evolved from a quiet, stick-like girl to a “slender” young woman. I was desirable, everyone agreed. Like sartorial matchmakers, my friends sent screenshots of crop-tops, and body-con dresses from shopping portals. ZARA and H&M stocked clothes only for my body-type, I could tell. At almost every family gathering, somebody would joke about how they’d like to get rid of their fat by “donating” to me, if they could. “You’re so lucky", another voice would say, while watching me eat a large piece of chocolate.
I still never know how to respond to the envy garnished with a sliver of fat phobia that gets served on the dinner table. Sometimes, it comes carelessly disguised as a compliment to me. All the woke discourse clearly dictates that “feeling bad” about it is not the correct response. I don’t have the right to. My body doesn’t put on weight no matter how many leon grill’s I disgracefully shove into it, and that is a privilege. It is not a misguided notion. In this visual world, especially the online one – built on all of Silicon Valley’s design crimes – it’s terrifying how a certain kind of beauty is sold as the central aspect of contemporary womanhood.
As the ever-articulate Roxane Gay rightly says in her memoir, Hunger – “Celebrities understand the economy of thinness, and most of them are willing to participate in that economy, taking to social media, where they pose for selfies with their cheeks sucked in to make themselves appear even gaunter. The less space they take up, the more they matter.”
I understand the need to term thinness as privilege, but I often wonder if is there is also space for me to harbour other narratives? It’s easy to precisely demarcate what trauma looks like online, to make laundry lists of how privilege works. But the real world is messier than any list you can make. For instance, I often find myself wondering if being thin means that I don’t get to talk about my tumultuous journey with food? Does trauma only occur at the intersection of food, and weight?
Dating
All through 2019, I hated food bloggers. It was the foundation of my identity. I even changed my dating app bio to “hates food bloggers” – unimaginative, but direct. If you ask me today why I decided to remove it from my bio, I’ll probably give you a taylor-swift-esque lecture about not wanting to be defined by what I hate. But back in 2019, the hate outweighed everything else, and I was more than willing to be defined by it.
Once I removed it – sometime last year – in an unnecessary stroke of fate, I ended up going out with a self-identified “foodie.” It petrified me when it took him an entire day to pick a restaurant. I didn’t tell him, but to me the pepperoni pizza we ate on date one was as good as the 250 Rs one I usually ordered at home. He was invested in the act of eating, and I – who had to parcel most of my share – told him that food did not particularly excite me. His look of bewilderment made me keep my theory on the future of food being merely capsules with the adequate nutrient benefits to myself. He’s not ready for it, I decided.
Another dude I met persistently asked me: “How come you love Bourdain, but are not interested in food?” We were walking across Ulsoor lake, his emphasis on the word “interested” was jarring. “I am interested in food,” I said, somewhat unconvinced myself, “I just am not much of an eater, I guess.”
“I get it..” He said, his face clearly revealing that he did not get it. But he was invested in appearing woke and sensitive. His performance wasn’t going to drop over my disinterest in food. Plus, we did also share a common interest in Anthony Bourdain, which ensured that my personality didn’t entirely decimate in his eyes.
“I had a good time,” I told him when he dropped me home. He joked and said it was probably because we walked for hours and didn’t eat. I laughed, gave him a kiss, and didn’t tell him that he was right. When I entered my apartment, I saw that my roommate had opened a bottle of beer. “Maybe I should have told him I draw food all the time,” I told her, while making myself comfortable on the balcony cushion, and pouring myself a drink. Another friend laughingly suggested DM’ing him all the pretty plates of food illustrations I’d drawn.
The dude sent me a poem that same night, and a Lorde song. He also said he wanted to eat fancy the next time, “Let’s pick the top five best restaurants in the city and decide on one,” he suggested. I sent him an eye roll emoji.
The second date never happened.
Home
The problem with going on dates with foodies is that it puts pressure on me to talk about food in a particular way. I must speak of how painful it is to cook for yourself (it truly is, I agree!), how this restaurant serves better burgers than that one, or how blueberry cheesecake tastes better than chocolate truffle cake, and eventually, of course, circle back to how much I miss home cooked food.
But if I were being honest, I’d tell them that whenever amma made thayir sadam at home, the seasoning was always off.
I’d tell them my eating is not disorderly, but it is always rife with anxiety. I remember throwing up every morning on my way to school, and on every other picnic we went to. On school trips, when we snuck around at night to gather in one room, I’d walk on eggshells – taking as long as possible to eat one chip – because I didn’t want to be sick the next morning on our way back.
I fall sick frequently. If somebody at work has a cold, I catch it. I regularly drink spoonfuls of iron tonic and still get fatigued by the sun, or cars, or screens. My legs ache easily, and nausea is always looking for a reason to make an appearance. My dislike for food is not a quirky personality trait that I adopted to seem more interesting – it’s a genuine struggle.
In 12th grade, when I was hospitalised with high dengue fever and a low blood platelet count, I found myself relieved to be on IV fluids for two days straight. At least, for those two days, no one told me that I must eat my way out of this illness. At least, we know this fever is caused by a mosquito bite, and no one can say it is because I’m eating less, I thought.
In the first couple of years of college, it was absurd to sit in a PG full of students complaining about the mess food. I didn’t register the extra salt, the overcooked rice, or the hardness in the idlis. Back at home, amma was always making mistakes like these. I would casually mention that amma was a bad cook. That we ordered take out instead of making elaborate meals when we had guests over. Everyone on the table would listen, unsure of how to respond. I didn’t understand it then, but it bothered me how every single time, me saying this was received as some sort of an indictment on the kind of mother she was.
Perhaps, my disinterest in food comes a little bit from all of this. From all those mornings of throwing up before an exam. From having seen amma cook for years – her face sweating, maxi full of sambar stains, eyes zapped with sleep and tiredness. You could tell that she wasn’t a woman cooking for any sort of joy – she was merely fulfilling a gendered role.
The food I like, as I have begun to piece together, is the food that is easy to eat, and light on the stomach. The food that didn’t make amma tired. Thayir sadam has never once resulted in me throwing up. It meant fewer vessels for amma to wash, and less time spent in the hot air of the kitchen.
Fish fry is what we usually have with alcohol. The marinated fish stays in the fridge for weeks. A couple of pieces get pulled out every night and put on a pan with cracking oil.
Leon grill is what I order when I feel lazy, and reckless.
When I’m sick, amma lets me sleep on curd mixed with rice water.
Tomato chammanthi is a staple dish that my dad makes. When I was in school, every now and then amma would ask if we could order in, because she had a deadline. My father would instantly get up, tighten his checkered lungi, and declare, “You sit here, I’ll make tomato chutney!” He would load it with green chillies, mash the tomatoes into a paste, and the entire kitchen counter would have spurts of tomato puree.
After dinner, he’d spend hours cleaning up the mess, a labour he cherished. Amma would sit in the bedroom with her head poured over her research work.
Home, for us, was never really about super-delicious, perfectly cooked food.
Some good things:
Making due by Ilana Harris-Babou
The stories women tell of loneliness by Anandi Mishra
My body is a cage of my own making by Roxane Gay
Why people are so awful online by Roxane gay
How often should you have sex a week? by Shelia Heti
The Walking Manifesto by Nadika Nadja
six impossible things is a newsletter about art, books, reading, and feelings. You may sign up if you want it delivered to your inbox. On Instagram, I’m @a_catinthesink.