CALORIES AND MEMORIES

Back in Mumbai...the annual Kolkata visit on Diwali holidays was the usual blur of eat, meet, laze, daze, ....you know the drill.

If last year's indulgence was Sarbhajas (a sweet where the 'sar' or cream atop the milk is deep-fried and soaked in sugar syrup...gruesome gluttony, eh?), this year it was the humbler, but no less horrific, Gujiya (the Bengali version is a ring-shaped sweet made of dried milk and sugar) and Danadar (which is unredeemingly made of only and only sugar drenched in even more sugar syrup).

Now I am back after eating enough of the above to last me till next year. In fact, am back in stride as well, with school and work and home and all such other busy-making stuff that life is made up of.

But time-outs are there, and they pull at the heart-strings, and also pull the facial muscles into a smile...sometimes.

There was this bottle of Dalimer Hajmi ( anardana churan...a sweet-sour digestive) that I had bought and ate in Kolkata, and had then stuffed a lot of other things in as well, from cookies to jeera golis to Narkel Naaru (coconut and jaggery laddus) made by my Mom (who was coincidentally in Kolkata during this time as well). I had taken out this bottle after unpacking to wash and reuse it as a spice jar. Before washing it, I was putting my finger inside and licking the remnants.

And my taste-buds got a surprise when after a lot of hajmi/churan/salty-sourness I suddenly bit into a small chunk of sweet jaggery-infused-coconut. A tiny bit of Ma-made naaru, travelling all the way from Kolkata. To make me all teary-eyed and wry-smiling in Mumbai.

Calories and memories...funny how closely they weave together.