Other than one of my favorite songs from Blink 182, the title is sort of reminiscent of my life story. When I got onto the long, sometimes confusing and initially downright painful path toward fixing my long-term health for good, I made umpteen changes in my life. I most certainly can’t discuss all of them in one article but one particular change I was discussing with Tehz a few weeks ago; she insisted I write down. So I put pen to paper (or ferocious typing to word document in this case) and here you have it:
My job makes me shuffle between two cities, Mumbai and Baroda. While my immediate family is based in Mumbai, my relatives are scattered all over Baroda and whenever I am there, they are concerned about my meals and are kind enough to constantly invite me for dinner to their house so that I get access to ‘ghar ka khana.’
Context is everything though! Ghar ka khana here means dinner at 9:30 or 10:00 pm (whereas I usually eat around 6.30 pm) and it also means force-feeding, refilling my plate if I look away for one second, specially made greasy food for me and the whole nine yards. You get the idea. To work around this, this is what I have now started doing:
I show up unannounced by 7:30 pm. Unannounced means nothing ‘special’ is prepped for me and I have access to true blue ghar ka khana (a simple, homemade sabzi with some roti)! My portions over time have gotten SOO much tinier too that there will never be a situation where there isn’t enough food for me! If that ever does end up being the case, then I ask my family to whip up a simple omelette preparation and have that as my dinner with roti.
No force-feeding, no oily food, no sentiments hurt and an early enough dinner with some beloved family over laughter and gossip. Epic win!