The other side of table.
– Ankita G.
Recently, I was traveling from Madurai to Delhi along with my husband, brother, and 13-month-old daughter. The flight was via Bengaluru, and the halt was for one and a half hours. Bengaluru airport is designed to cater to the new-age generation and their need for luxury. We were having lunch at one of its executive lounges. The lounge has a variety of cuisine, drinks, and desserts, which are spread as a buffet. And the place is full of servers and stewarts to assist you with your needs.
I was preoccupied with many chores, responsibilities, and fatigue. It was a long trip with a 13-month-old. I was going to Delhi after spending time with my in-laws. as a new member, a new daughter-in-law. New mother. I have had my share of struggles with food habits. In my 3 years of marriage, I have struggled with adjusting to my joint family’s food habits. Being an Indian daughter-in-law, we have our tradition of eating after all the family members have had their meals. There were many times when I ate less than I wanted to. The reason was that as many members are there, it’s difficult to understand the quantity, and those moments were difficult as you craved your mother’s arm, with whom I was unable to communicate. Then there were moments where you saw other family members unintentionally not finish everything they had on their plate, and in those moments, the primal hunger in you became hatred for your own family for being inconsiderate. My father-in-law always insisted from the first meal I had on my wedding night to finish everything on the plate, which even my mother taught us. I had the privilege of knowing my father-in-law and mother-in-law struggled when they had a family of five members. Every member was either a growing-up teenager or a hard-working individual. In those times, the dilemma of a mother was to either cook enough for all or take the risk of cooking more and see the food go to waste. A mother was torn between serving food to her husband and kids with dignity and then having the leftover to fulfill her hunger without feeling shame.
The luxury buffet I sat where everything was more than I could consume as a consumer, and the waiters and servers who were serving food also had to throw the left-over food. When they are so hungry, every single day they have to make the choice of living with dignity or going to sleep with their stomachs half full. I felt that they had the right to be absolutely angry with the customers they were serving who didn’t understand their own hunger and were taking more than they could consume and letting the food go to waste. I was even angry with my husband and brother, who insisted on having hot rotis and left the old ones for trash. It was their mistake to attend to phone calls while the food got cold, then throw that and ask for the hot one.
Going hungry to bed is part of the struggle, but it doesn’t entitle us to splurge when we finally have enough. My mother never let anyone of us go to bed hungry, but I don’t know how many times she went to bed hungry. My mother-in-law and father-in-law never let any of their kids go hungry to bed, but only they know how many times they did; it’s their personal dignity that they will never share that part of the struggle with anyone. Being mindful of a person’s needs when they are serving you at home, at a at a buffet, or at a restaurant would make us all a healthy community.
There were moments I was so hungry that I was feeling guilty about suffering, as that would make my mother feel helpless. In those same moments, I was feeling ashamed of my own hunger, knowing very well that my mother-in-law has endured the same, but those were moments that taught me to break the generational feeling of helplessness and shame and also understand my own basic need for food. We cannot understand satiation if you have not experienced profound hunger, even when food is right in front of your physical reach. Just be mindful of the one who is serving you.
This did make me understand the depth of the last scene in the movie ‘The Blood Diamond’. He lost all his family and community for diamonds, which were casually displayed in showrooms. That’s why the community is failing somewhere.