Monday, August 17, 2009

The cream roll syndrome


The other day my father in law visited us, for the first time in 2 years. As all parents do when visiting there offspring living far off, he cam loaded with goodies. Little home made delicacies that we wish we could make but never learn to. Delicacies that get lodged in our brains as memories that beg to be relived. That tasty aam ka achar that only mummy can make, the ghar ka ghee, gajar ka halwa that tastes so good because there is so much of mummy’s love in it, along with all that desi ghee.

For days before his short visit, there were umpteen phone calls, frantic emails and one oft repeated question, ghar se kya laon? Never one to let opportunities go waste, we always had something to add…thodi si vadiyan, thoda sa achar, thodi si fresh raw veggies (that always befuddles airport baggage check personnel), thoda se aam, thodi se woh Sharma wale ke fresh cream rolls….yummy.

Eventually, the much awaited cream rolls arrived; we rushed to bite into them like they were royal dishes especially created for us by the finest cooks in the land. Afterall did’nt we remember them as the tastiest bit of snack from high school, the coveted cream rolls that the thela wale bhaiya outside school doled out at a few rupees apiece and was always sold out by lunch break! But what’s this? Why do they taste so rubbery, why is the cream so ……sugary? Why is it all not how we remembered it?

Alas, we were hit by the cream roll syndrome. It creeps up on you stealthily, always when you are at your most vulnerable, trying to recreate that moment/taste/image that made your heart fly or your senses go wild when you were a child! As we grow up it gets worse, afflicting us, ruining more of our childhoods cherished memories.

Haven’t we all experienced its effect at one time of the other? It may not be the cream roll syndrome fro you, it cold be the pastry syndrome, the samosa syndrome, the mera gaon mera desh syndrome. The name may differ but the sadness over the loss of treasured memories remains the same.

That favorite cricket ka maidan that suddenly seems far less grand, can’t see why you humiliated yourself time and again for that young lady across the street, the roadside chaat that you saved and scrimped for, that kaleidoscopic t-shirt that today seems too colorful to even be a duster.

Memories that time added an extra sheen to, that nostalgia polished till they become Solomon’s gold!

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