Jet lag and the batata chivda

They say you regress into your young self when you go back to your place of origin. 

Okay fine, but seriously, do I really want to regress that far? I ask myself, at 3 am as I think of stealthily sneaking into my mom’s kitchen to get some batata chivda (a savory and sweet potato fritter snack filled with raisins and nuts). 

Jet lag makes you hungry - at odd times. And while grabbing a banana may be a more sensible (and easier, not to mention healthier) alternative, I carefully evaluate my kitchen raid. 

I text my kid on a different continent and time zone. 

Her response makes me laugh. Game on, I decide. 

All the stealth and sneaking is so I don’t wake up my parents. But the process goes way way back into my childhood as I try to sneak a besan ladoo from my grandmom’s kitchen when she goes down for her afternoon siesta.

As your childhood miscreant days will remind you, it’s mostly about noise and timing so you don’t get caught with your hand in the proverbial cookie jar. 

Hmmm… how much noise will I make?

My walk is soft and sneaky. No noise there. Check. 

Opening the jar could involve some loud displaced sounds in the dark. Hmm…

My mind wanders again to my grandmother’s steel dabba ( container) - now that was trickier and far noisier. Opening it involved some force for my tiny fingers and God forbid, if the lid fell and clanged away on the tile floor, it meant certain doom. Not only did I have to contain the lid from falling, but my tiny palms had to quickly muffle the resonance and echo of the metal sound as it opened. Yes, this is how a tiny restless kid sometimes found ways to entertain herself as the house fell quiet in the afternoon. 

 I think of my grandmother’s stainless steel dabba (container) of ladoo (sweet sticky balls of ghee, sugar and roasted-to-perfection chickpea flour, seasoned with cardamom, and masterfully coaxed into the softest, most delicious creations. Lined symmetrically in perfect concentric circles, my grandfather ate one at around 4 pm each afternoon. 

Now that makes me almost certain that my grandmother knew exactly when one went missing and who was responsible for it. But she never once breathed a word to me. Sheer love. I notice it now, even if I didn’t notice it then. 

I suppose, a part of our childhood is spent imagining ways in which we dupe adults. Only to understand later that they always saw right through us and all our silliness. 

As I regress into the scrawny barefooted kid quietly opening my grandmother’s glass cabinet to get the heavy (for me then) dabba, I remember all the excitement this activity entailed. 

True. All evidence of a childhood filled with antics - mostly unnecessary. Mostly creating a LOT of excitement over teeny tiny insignificant things. 

Is that really why I want to break into my mom’s kitchen? Is it really for the batata chivda? Or for an attempt to create the laughter and excitement from the silliest insignificant things from childhood. 

Even if I may never feel that level of excitement over small things anymore,  maybe just maybe,  a part of me feels that I may detect the slightest trace.