A 2 Minute Requiem to a childhood friend.

Circa 1983, they came around to the school I was in and distributed free packets of a new delicacy. Wrapped in bright yellow coloured air tight packages, they were out to tempt our 10 year old tongues with a new taste from an intriguingly shaped object defining a new concept in cooking and eating.

Incidentally that was around the age when you first learnt about litres and millilitres in maths, Centigrade and boiling point of water in science. These were the 2 units that drew you closer to this product. You were excited to experiment at home the boiling point of 400 Ml of water into which you were advised to add the ingredients. More importantly they asked you to boil it for just 2 minutes. That was the first, Time vs. Volume vs. Temperature graph you plotted. The aroma and the satiation of hunger came free with your science experiment. We read what we understood then, we never read Taste Enhancer, MSG, protein content or the other stuff in fine print. Moreover most of the fine print read like pages out of an Organic Chemistry text book. At the age of 10 we recognised 2 Minutes, and 400ml of boiling water.

Aroma was an integral part of Indian cooking. But this aroma went on to redefine the stereotypical Indian curry smell that emanates from any Indian kitchen. An aroma that would go on to replace the smell of sambars, rasams or chicken tikka masala from an Indian kitchen on a busy weekday morning.

The shape in which it came was also quiet fascinating. They were all wormy and dried up. Growing up in a Malayalee household the closest I was familiar with this shape was the Idiyappam which was also an entangled wormy mess but soggy and boring since it was bereft of the so called taste enhancers but the interesting part was the boiled egg curry that was served along with it. The only taste enhancer was the threat from your parents that if you don’t eat it, you would end up starving rest of the day.

So the messiah in the name of Maggie had arrived to exterminate the boring Iddayappam out of my life. But my mom, being my mom and a wonderful cook was always averse and sceptical about anything that was packaged and instant. She didn’t believe 2 minutes were enough to boil anything and take the evil elements out of it. I protested then, but she is being proven right 32 years down the road. Today as a so called busy parent, I am not as paranoid as my mother but instead tell my wife to quickly stir up a pack of Maggie for my kid’s lunch since it saves time.

Maggie and I grew up together, trusting each other; she has come to my rescue many a times during my bachelor days when all you had was a kettle and a large soup bowl particularly when all restaurants had closed for the day. A man’s master chef moment was to cook Maggie in 2 Minutes and break a couple of eggs into it. Several variants of improvised taste enhancers have been tried and tested in those days; one worth a mention is emptying the last drops of Old Monk into a cooked bowl of Maggie as a taste and sense enhancer.

I’m not sure if I am right or wrong now. However, I feel that I failed to show the wisdom my mom exhibited 32 years back, not to trust anything that was packaged and instant. I might sound archaic, but aren’t we all headed the organic way these days? Our lifestyles revolve around looking up available archaic literature from Yogic postures for a better sleep to herbal medication to live healthier.

Anything instant was fretted and fumed at by my mom who was old school. To drink good filter coffee you had to brew the brew overnight, but then Bru came along and claimed that you can brew filter coffee instantly. The jury was out on Instant gratification Vs Emotional Gratification; a good Brew went through a makeover with the emotional vowel ‘E’ being replaced with ‘U’ so as to indicate that YOU made a choice to be instantly gratified at the cost of an emotionally motivated delayed gratification,that decision would prove detrimental in the long run. Well, the whole concept of instant gratification, be it for the taste buds or simple aspirations in life, was not a way of life 3 to 4 decades back. Yet we embraced Maggie whole heartedly.

I’m no food safety expert to pass judgements here but I would certainly like to see large corporations, especially in the food industry to act responsibly realising they are in the business of feeding people of the world and not just in pursuit of a statistic called market share.