Simple pleasures

At times you look back in joy at some past moments of your life and then try to recreate it again just to sway in the similar feeling. Puffed rice or mudi is a staple of every Bengali middle class household.. those crunchy puffed rice is served as an unostentatious breakfast as well as a delectable evening snack. Mudi was rarely brought from shops. My parents would patiently wait for the mudi ali ( a woman who sold mudi ) to call in once in a fortnight. A wiry, solid woman wearing a tattered white sari, frayed sandals, a face stamped with lines of age and hardships , she sold mudi house to house even in the blistering summer heat when most people preferred to stay cool under the shades, but she had hunger in her belly, she couldn’t afford that luxury. With huge sack of mudi perched on her head she would come knocking to our doors with beads of sweat trickling down her face. Other than money for her mudi, she would also expect a cup of tea and some snack which most households willingly obliged as she was a familiar face. My father mostly had a bowl of mudi and a cup of tea after he came back from work. But me and my sister loved our mudi like potpourri-mudi with crackling peanuts, julienned coconuts, wicked chillis, garnished with flavoursome coriander leaves and the zing of mustard oil. Mudi was snack which was never served individually in our house, we would all dig in from a one big bowl, and more the number of people, the merrier.. it was around which we exchanged day’s stories and sometimes juicy gossip. Few days back hubby brought a huge bag of mudi from an Indian grocery shop and said let’s create some evening magic. So I make mudi makha and team it up with some store-bought masala chai.. we eat, we laugh, we talk and try to live in the present and not past.