Rice Memories

Last night I had a wonderful time with an old fellow-traveller. We sat up late with some excellent biryani with its traditional accompaniments and traded stories until it was time to go home.

I have many memories of bumming around with this gentleman. I remember him telling me, "You are indeed a bum," at least once. We were all bums then, when we were not being professionals. He remains in-service, and I am now not in the same service, but it was a fantastic time.

The memories of food between friends serve to keep us connected. Good meals never entirely leave the digestive system of the brain. Their residues remain, allowing us to compare current intake with the intake of bygone eras, or our faint recollections of them.

The same goes for our students. We remember all of them in faint echoes and resonances, by their shadows and fragments of their names. But they are our staple diet, our common bond. Some are particular piquant in the impressions they have left. Some we can remember in unique instances of memory the way we remember the unique meals of surpassing excellence; some we remember in a general sense because they were so much a part of our lives — like the corner shop which used to sell the most excellent murtabak everyday, and which we savoured frequently, or the fiery noodles that were our most common breakfast and the anchor of our diet.

And there are few meals I have hated or disliked enough to remember in a negative way. In fact, as with students, there are none.