The Joco – Serious Clan

 Joco – Serious  (mixing humor and seriousness in equal proportions)

Life back in 90’s was a bit simpler, slower and happier in my city. I grew up in a family of four, where it was made sure we ate our meals together (at least one) every single day. Food was an entity in our lives. We planned, prepared and relished on our curries and saags(green leaves) and fritters. There was less of a fusion in our kitchen, with no mention of butter chicken dosa or chocolate pani puri. Of course, we had bread pizza and vegetable Maggi in our menus. The credit of having a healthy relationship with food goes to our parents and we kids have followed it diligently. My parents always brought fresh local produce and prepared scrumptious meals out of them.

The six rasas in food namely Sweet, Sour, Salty, Bitter, Pungent and Astringent were always there in our plates in some form or the other. We usually had a balanced meal of colorful vegetables, protein and carbs.

My father and me were the cooler ones. We enjoyed anything and everything on our plates but we were a tab bit biased towards vegetables and saags. Brinjal is my all-time favorite. I can easily give away Biryani for a serving of Baingan Bhaja (Brinjal fritters).

My mother and brother were the picky eaters and had preference towards tasty, spicy and meaty stuff.

Karela was never welcomed in our house. Sometimes Bapa (father in Odia) managed to sneak it in and we both enjoyed eating it. But it was not a mandatory food for everyone. Moreover Ma (mother in Odia) made sure to add lots of potatoes so that the mother son duo can always have the potatoes and we had our karela.

In Odia cuisine we all potatoes in all our dishes. In those times extra carbs never showed up as layers on our abdomen. It was a different era where people never looked for a treadmill or stationary cycle for exercise. We rather used to walk to the market and cycle to school.

Anyways coming back to our story, somewhere between January to May the neem flowers bloom. My father always made sure we eat those neem flowers once a year which improves our immunity and good for our overall health.

Neem flowers are small white in color and grow in bunches. Even though less as compared to the leaves, but still neem flowers are very bitter.

One fine morning Bapa brought a bunch of fresh neem flowers. They have a subtle sweet honey like smell. Ma started frowning the moment she saw them.

Reluctantly she cleaned, washed and boiled the flowers, just to lessen down the bitter taste. She further added rice flour, spices and green chilli to enhance the taste. And the final crunchy flower tikkis tasted good with fresh coriander chutney.

It was mostly eaten by Bapa and me and a small portion was given to Ma and Bingo (that’s what I call my younger brother). Although I had not seen but Ma and Bingo said they ate it. The neem flower ritual was done for the year as we are had to eat only once.

The next day Bapa while taking the trash out, stumbled upon the discarded tikkis and he was sure it was Ma and/or Bingo who had thrown away their share. He was somehow sure of Ma’s involvement (proof of living with each other since last 15 years).

He confronted them and both of them owned up their folly. Bapa just kept quiet and did not shout on them, he never does, a true gentleman.

Next week the dreaded white flowers made their reappearance. Ma was still unhappy but she proceeded with the preparation without making a fuss. She knew Bapa is a hard task master. Bapa is usually lenient on most of the cases, but when health comes into play, he is a tough nut to crack.

This time he kept his gaze fixed on the morsel of rice which had the flower tikki in it. (The size of tikki was very small, almost 1/5th of actual aloo tikki we find in the chat shop).

Bingo somehow gulped it down and chugged in a big glass of chaas to compensate for the bitter taste. Ma also had filled her mouth with the tikki and tried to gulp it down in one go. But her bitter taste buds are ultra-sensitive and her stomach had other plans altogether. The other occupants of the stomach did not like this new entrant, the bitter flower tikki. And her stomach pushed it out by reverse peristalsis. She rushed to wash basin and vomited everything. After a while she came back with red eyes and wiping her pale face with a fresh towel. She came back and blamed Bapa for the whole conundrum of flower tikki. Bapa gracefully managed the situation. He always has the patience of an elephant. In the evening to compensate for his blunder of forcing her to eat healthy food, he took us out for dinner for some junk stuff.

As people say time flies and it actually does. Now we kids are all grown up and Bingo works for a well-known pharma company in Europe.

Today Ma and Bapa received a parcel of medicines. Guess what there was a neem leaves supplement for immunity. And now Ma is taking it on a regular basis because Bingo does not take no for an answer. Although it is just a pill but the taste still lingers in the mouth.

It is rightly said – “Leave it to Libra to always get the last laugh.”

Bapa is born on October 6th.