Gerald D'Cunha

"Humility, that low, sweet root, from which all heavenly virtues shoot.” Thomas Moore W hat makes food delicious is not just the ingredients and recipe, but also the love and reverence with which it’s prepared and served. That’s why, a very ordinary and easy-to-prepare dish, like ‘Langar Wali Daal’, tastes so, so delicious! A couple of days ago, I chanced upon a video in which a village woman in Punjab was showing us how they prepared ‘Langar Wali Daal’. She was preparing it on a Chula using the typical village utensils. I was so tempted to have it, that I tried to describe what I had just seen to my wife and son. That’s enough for my son to go on and on and on… I mean, raving about this traditional daal dish from Punjab. “I have tasted the ultimate one in the Golden Temple, Amritsar,” he proudly let us know, “That experience of sitting on a Pangat and savouring it bending your head amidst some 50,000 people, regardless of their class, colour and creed,   ...

I was at a friend’s place last morning when his wife served us some hot rava idlies with spicy pudina chutney. He saw me eating in a hurry and said, “If you eat like this, you will miss out on the glory of this food… Eat slowly, mindfully.” I instantly slowed down… His wife had prepared the food with loads of love. She had served it, too, with loads of love. And, how was I treating it? Maybe, I never meant to hurt her or my friend… But, No… I had no business to treat food the way I did – ‘mindlessly’. “Mouth alone cannot offer us the complete experience of relishing the food,” my friend said, “our eyes, nose, hands, hearts – all do.” Then, my friend said an interesting thing. “One reason why we do not pay attention to the food we eat is, because we are overloaded with information…. The mind is constantly disturbed. We need to throw out the garbage that we load in our minds.” The garbage? “Do we need so much of information that we...