Feasting, fasting

Some years ago, a novel was published by that name. For now, it seems to sum up the manner of the season, the way in which life works for people around me. The Bengalis are celebrating Durga puja, while the Gujaratis are busy with Navaratris, with the Tamilians stacking up their kolus for the same occasion. And shops have huge sales; people are buying like mad and everyone wants new clothes and new gadgets and new jewellery and new cars, since everything is being made available at tempting discounts.

In the middle of all this expenditure, there comes a need for sustenance. While traditionally each day of the nine-day period of Navaratri mandates a different kind of food offering to the gods – especially Devi – mithai rules. In good South Indian style, the naivedhyam will have something sweet to it, be it fruit or payasam or pongal or whatever. I am still trying to work out whether sugar substitutes are allowed, apart from the fact that I have not followed the usual family custom of providing that offering every morning after a bath and lighting the lamp. My mother used to, even if it was just a katori of sweetened milk that she had available and often included chocolate, apples and fruit cake on her puja thali. I have not had the time or the mindspace to manage it, though I do remember I should, usually when it is too late.

Some of my friends take a day off from food during this time. Sometimes even many days off, though they will make up for the abstinence during the evening and very early morning. I like the idea of fasts Indian style, especially what I know of the way the Gujaratis and Konkanis do it. Friends of mine will not eat regular food on whichever particular day they fast. Instead, they munch their way through what I would categorise as ‘junk’ – chips, sabudana vada, sabudana khichdi, usal and more, all made with ingredients that are heavily fried in oil and are redolent with salt and spices that, on normal-diet days, would horrify my doctor and nutritionist. Others concentrate on fruit, crunching their way through bowls of papaya, mango, grapes, chikoos and citrus, washing it all down with water, limbu paani or chaas.

My mother never fasted, not that I know of. She refused to allow me to do so, even when I used the argument that it was not only good for my figure and my digestive system, especially my amoebiasis, but was also a common bonding glue – I had little in common with people I went to college with, so maybe this would help to find some ground that we could share. But it was verboten, which was perhaps good for all of us, since I left not just college but the country soon after and had very little to do with anyone I had met in class.

And after the fasting comes the feasting. For years friends have been asking me to take a walk into the small streets in the concentratedly Muslim areas of Mumbai, after dark, during Ramzaan, when the food is divine and the ambience special and unusual. I haven’t yet. Maybe one day, when I have tamed my pet amoeba, my nerves and my tastebuds, I will.