TRAVEL + LEISURE / MARCH 2016BOY VS FOOD
For the past couple of years, the boy has been constantly
and massively hungry. He dreams food, thinks food, and
talks food 24/7. Among his favourite movies are Ratatouille
(watched 28 times), and, more recently, Julie and Julia (9
times at last count). He loves the TV series ‘Modern Family’
so much that he used his pocket money to order ‘The Modern
Family Cookbook’ (bet you didn’t know there was one).
Experiments in the kitchen began with Masterchef Australia,
and have continued relentlessly with online cooking videos
(current crush: The Joy of Baking). In fact, (proud mom
moment) he launched his own YouTube channel—The
MaskerChef—three months ago, after he got profi cient at
turning out near-perfect brownies, restaurant-style butter
chicken, and a mean lemon meringue pie.
Despite all the butter and sugar he uses in his signature
dishes, the boy has always had a natural affi nity for healthy.
He actually likes Chawanprash, will voluntarily pick muesli
over Chocos, enjoys his grandmom’s ragi rotti (fi nger-millet
bread), loves the wholesome goodness of aubergine, binges
on salad, and doesn’t care much for chocolate, ice cream
or oversweet Indian mithai. As part of his 2016 New Year
resolution, he voluntarily went veggie in January, ‘just to see
what your life is like, mum’, and stuck to it. A year ago, he
saved up all his birthday money and spent it on—I’m not
making this up—an air fryer, because, don’t you know, it is a
far healthier way to cook.
Travelling with the boy is exciting, eye-opening, and
thoroughly exhausting. Two years ago, when he was
studying the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughals in history,
I decided it would be a great idea for him to see it all in
the fl esh. I pitched the trip to him as a food tour, knowing
that was the only way it would fl y. It did—Boy trotted
happily behind me to Humayun’s Tomb and Qutab Minar,
fully believing that these excursions were merely well-
timed, and necessary, breaks from the main business of
Paranthewali Gali, Karim’s, and Old Famous Jalebiwala.
Annual family trips to Goa traverse the well-worn triangle
of beach-pool-shack food endlessly—until, thoroughly
disgusted, Girl and I head off for the markets and Britto’s
cheesecake, leaving dad and Boy to it.
Last year, for weeks before our trip to California, Boy and
his equally food-mad cousin co-edited a Google doc across
continents to come up with a master plan detailing which
restaurant to hit for breakfast, lunch and dinner each day,
and what exactly to eat (bacon, bacon fried chicken, bacon-
wrapped hot dogs, chocolate bacon) once they got there. The
cousin is slated to visit us in June, and already plans are afoot
around sorties to Mosque Road after sundown for Ramzan
treats—emu and camel kebabs, patthar gosht, haleem...
As you can tell, travelling with the boy is not as much
fun for a veggie mom, but having a food-mad child has its
compensations. Chief among them being that, as he gets
older and more skilful in the kitchen, I expect to hear a lot
more “What shall I make for dinner?” than “What’s for
dinner?” Seriously, what’s not to like about that?