Palate Obsession

We as a nation have a palate obsession. They say if you want to form an opinion of a nation, observe how they behave on the roads. I want to better that and say if you want to form an opinion about a nation observe how they dig into their food. People never cease to amaze me, but generally speaking we as Pakistanis behave most interestingly when we’re having food publicly. I’d start off with my work example. We have a decent cafeteria which serves lunch daily. The catering is outsourced so we can not complain much about the usually drenched mobil diesel oil qourmas but Allah kaa shuker hai we get to evade the Karachi heat. Days when we have biryani a regular comment that comes my way is ‘Arey dieting ker rahey hu..itnaa thoraa leyaa hai’ and I’m like ‘I can get my sorry ass there again and get a second helping’. The chicken piece aka BOUTEE nestles pretty on top of the rice mountain and the serious business of bringing it down begins. It is hilarious, today this colleague sitting down pondered for two seconds staring at his plate wondering where to begin from, rotated his plate a touch and found the perfect angle.
My job is a hybrid of a white color and a blue color job. I tell you I have traveled extensively across Pakistan and if you thought cricket alone sans cultures and backgrounds you were wrong. Food unites us like no force known to man and with all the demographic disparity, our eating habits generally speaking are the same. I sometimes have to eat alongside the trade, staff reporting in to me etc and I give them this, the fact that there unfortunately less educated then we are nonetheless the eating fiasco gets more interesting here. The other day I saw one of my supervisors break a substantial chunk of the roti and then fold it thrice. Yeah thrice, try doing that with paper if you’re low on imagination :D. Anyways this was’nt a rare phenomenon, the block sized piece of roti then is made to scoop the curry. Here is the catch; kids do not try this at home. One has to have a good hand to mouth coordination to swiftly lift the roti mound and release it in the mouth, lest you drip the gravy all over you. Then the ‘roti gola’ joy ride begins in the mouth, its going stay there for a while doing iterative rounds of the molars and the canines. If imagining it is a tough ask you might want to make your life simpler by conjuring an image of a cow chewing its cud.
I still recall as a child, what my younger brother and I enjoyed most whenever a family shaadee kaa video was being watched anywhere. It was the footage where they show people having food. We use to do lip synching for people thinking out aloud while they enjoyed free food. Fishing for the right ‘boutee’ oblivious to prying eyes behind your back at the serving table, is a brave thing to do. The most interesting people are the ones who get their food and make sure they stand close to the action area for fear of the food getting cold during the walk from their seating area to the serving area. Nonetheless I can not take spite at any of the aforementioned as most weddings I go to is solely for the promise of good free food.

Visual Silence

The spinning top for as long, as I recall has held my marvel. Right from the inception where the thread releases the top, breathing in it the kinetic energy it needs as its life line. The poetic concentric movements appease the eye, which is designed in a way to appreciate symmetry with few variations for the brain to process. Behold the onlookers smile as it starts fading with the first signs of the top movement slowing and life oozing out of it, before it finally blends in beautifully with the visual silence.
My life off-lately is akin to the spinning top. Work consumes me completely and I spin on an axis with a focal point being my work. My movements are so fluid and no amount of friction such as my domestic commitments, sports, social life or things that excite me seem to slow down the swirling me. The worst is that I can’t detach myself from my scenery and have a quiet conversation with myself and find out about the life within. A good nights’ sleep is a major redeeming factor as days blend into nights and vice versa. Suddenly you start thinking of buzz corporate clichés, ‘burn out’, ‘work life balance’ and start empathizing with your old man who worked hard all his life and scavenged for words like ‘I know, I understand’ at home but rarely found them. From the corporations’ perspective the scene is a pretty one as I spin, fueled by my deliverables, empowerment and company goals. Spinning, analogous to movement is a relative phenomenon and you realize people around you, your friends etc seem freer as their orbital movement has slack that allows them to contact you every now and then and ask to meet up to unwind. Unwind I will, the top is slowing down already and the reality around me seems augmented with tell-take signs of introspection breaking in.