What I fondly remember from the vacations my parents took us brothers on, is mostly the food. Since these trips almost exclusively involved touring various religious sites across Tamil Nadu, I had earlier on developed a healthy aversion for temples and its thronging crowds. But the food? Those memories linger like the scent of crushed jasmine in a child’s palm.
My mother would wilt plantain leaves over an open fire to make them pliable to pack food that could challenge the weather and still stay stiff and somewhat fresh. It was usually lemon rice, coloured a golden yellow by turmeric, or coconut rice, pearl white and flecked with roasted coconut and browned Bengal gram. Or stacks of chappatis with a side of ginger, tomato, garlic and onion, fried and swimming in oil. Sometimes, there were also podi idlis, remarkably staying separate from each other even when crammed in a packet.
These food packets, further wrapped in newspaper, were usually stacked in a stainless steel tiffin container and distributed one each at mealtime. They were part of a middle-class Indian housewife’s ingenious ways to find cost-effective alternatives to avoid eating out at restaurants. After all, like all mothers in her circle, mine had to keep a tab on the spending, to not let it get in the way of her usual home budget.
In retrospect, I remember being embarrassed about eating out of those banana leaf packets. Much more than the food, the oil in it made my palms greasy, and in pre-globalisation days, travel kits didn’t include hand sanitiser or paper towels. Simply put, we weren’t afforded other solutions than plain water to wash it off.
Just recently, as we were preparing for a weekend trip, the mother in the extended family took it upon herself to prepare and pack travel food. “If at least we eat a couple of meals of our own, we could save some money,” her theory was the same as my mother’s.
But there’s perhaps a simple and obvious lesson here — packed lunches save money.
Honestly though, I would never miss the drama of family travel we undertake as grown-ups — the frayed nerves, the bruised egos, the cranky children and the tedium that follows everything. It’s like being trapped on the sets of a reality show.
But the food made up for it. Twenty years later, turns out, the food South Indian mothers pack on family trips hasn’t changed one bit. It’s still idlis, lemon rice and curd rice. Strangely, I realised I wasn’t embarrassed to eat these any more. I might even have enjoyed eating the idlis. The availability of paper plates, hand sanitiser and wet wipes helped, perhaps.
My mother would wilt plantain leaves over an open fire to make them pliable to pack food that could challenge the weather and still stay stiff and fresh.
The writer is an independent journalist who lives in Stuttgart, Germany, and often writes stories that intersect food and travel
