Eat, Play and loving it

Childhood is precious and so are it's sweet little memories. Sometimes you find something that takes you in the flash back, a food especially, the taste dissolving in your mouth, passing smoothly thru your palette, and the finger licking afterwards. For that brief period of time you forget you are an adult or have weight dilemmas.



This is how I felt when I found that Crax packet hanging in a small shop. Now a grown up I couldn't possibly eat it, in public the way I used to. If you have eaten it as a kid, you would know how. Ring fingers of course. Fitting the perfectly round corn rings on the tip of your fingers one by one and then gobbling it like eating from a fork. Sometimes you did it on all the ten fingers.

I get the same feeling when I find the Fatafat churan packet or Ravalgon candies at Paan shops. Having lived my childhood in north finding these things in the west and other parts of India makes me feel just out of this world.

Aaahhh the simple pleasures of life. Especially childhood when you made so many games and plays over food. Remember....

- rolling the maximum Maggi noodles around the fork
- drinking the soft drinks from multiple straws
- blowing bubbles thru the straws in your soft drink
- enjoying eating the ice cube more than the ice cream
- putting the ice cube in others shirts
- putting two long slices in your mouth like beastly teeth
- sucking on Phantom peppermint cigarettes in winters and puffing the vapour as smoke
- blowing biggest bubbles from the Bubble gum. Weird that we stop eating bubble gums when we grow up, eating the nice adult chewing gum as a mouth freshener or teeth cleaner.. chehh
- making orange drink by dissolving the Orange sweet candy in water
- hosting Bhujia and Roohafza party for friends
- fight over the largest piece of cake or bigger portions of coveted food with your siblings
- eat your share the last to tease others who have already finished
- squeeze the orange peel in each other's eyes
- divide the pieces of Cadbury Gems by precise counting, even divide the last odd piece into half if need be
- show off the collection of free gifts you won in promotional food packaging. I got some plastic miniature cars in my Crax packet
- create fizz in your Campa Cola bottle and spray on others (and later get punished by Mom for messing up the place)
- fight contests on who drinks the Maaza fastest
- lick the chocolate wrapper clean
- eating Bournvita straight out of the box and always leaving it loose causing it to thicken and get Mom's scolding
- eating Cerelac of your younger baby sibling all powdery and sticky
- eating Paan Pasand toffee like Paan because Mom won't allow you to eat it
- eating the cool Ice Lolly outside school for Rs 2 which Mom gave you as pocket money. (There were rumors doing the school ground that it was made out of animal piss, but who cared when it was so tasty)

- scrape the skin of the grape with your teeth before eating the mushy center, to make each grape last longer
- While eating Cream biscuits, eat the biscuit part from the sides first and the cream last (unlike the open lick and dunk Oreos advertisements)
- depending on whether you like the bread or the cream part, saving the better part of the Cake for later

- choosing which Ravalgon sugar candy to eat, assuming each colour has a different taste,  but knowing that all have the same taste, it's just the  fascination of the colour

- checking the color of your tongue after eating a particular color candy

- licking the melting ice cream bar from your hand
- making finger rings from the Cadbury Eclairs golden wrapper

- rolling your tongue around the mouth or digging your teeth with fingers to get the sticky Cadbury Eclairs pieces.

I don't remember when I first ate Cadbury Eclairs, but it was never my favorite, preferring sweet orange candy Ravalgon or Paan Pasand. There were days when you could get 4 caramel toffee for Re 1, then 2 and now 1. Inflation impacts kids too. In fact the new Cadbury Choclairs advertisement is opposite of how I feel.  Yes the sticky part is irritating to the core but  it is also the best part of the toffee. The toffee gets over but the sticky pieces in your mouth continue to give you the taste making it last longer.  Gross but you simply can't forget the taste and the after taste. I would rather say "Ye chipakata kyon nahin hai"

Eating was more fun in childhood, now its just a task and playing with it is not funny anymore. Sigh!!

Comments

Shilpi Dutta said…
Every child remembers CRAX i am sure...and ofcourse pan pasand, bubble gums and licking the chocolate wrapper. I still lick the wrappers (when I am at home ;) ) U made me nostalgic ...loved ur post..Yes eating was fun in childhood..and now its a struggle to survive as we grew up
Neha said…
So true Shilpi... The childhood quirks are such fond memories. Note when you look at food you think of calories, digestion and even though you want to eat ut, can you skip for something healthy and tasty... ha ha ha.. irony of life
Sujata said…
Childhood has long gone but memories remain. Even though I still do some of the same things somewhere the charm is lost. Great roundup of the quirks,Neha :)Really made me nostalgic.

BTW about the ice lolly, we were warned that it was made from drain water! People spin all kinds of stories, never enough to keep kids away.

Neha said…
Agree totally, you may do the same things but the charm is gone with the childhood. Seriously nostalgic... Even the drain water ice lolly

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