Writing prompt #4

Rules: Take 10 minutes to write. Please time yourself. When you have finished writing, please leave a link to your response in the comments box. Have fun!

Prompt: Write about an ordinary, everyday event in your family's life. It could be something that your mother or father did every day - ironing clothes, cutting vegetables, doing puja. Or something one of your siblings did - washing the moped or scooter, perhaps. May be even something that all of you did together regularly.

She came as a new bride into a joint family, one that covered generations from a great grandmother to the inlaws to bachelor brothers-in-law. It was a different world to adjust to, different kind of food, different personalities, diverse expectations and such. An aging cook catered to the needs of the family. Since she usually got in late, breakfast was almost always bread. Why not, since it was the land of Iyengar bakeries of yore- the dear Bengaluru.

Tiffin at 4pm was a standard feature, the cook's masterpieces made its way to the table(no make it the floor, dining table didn't exist then). From akki rotti to steaming hot idlis and dosas, the cook's repertoire was matchless. But the audience was limited, given it was the middle of the day, specially with working male members of the household.

Then the older child happened. Many years later a younger child happened. The family moved out, became a nuclear setup.

For the first time in her married life, the bride(now a woman, a mother) found herself having to fend herself in the kitchen. First she bought herself a copy of 'Samaithu Paar', the legendary 'Cook and See', of course. It was not the era to make lengthy STD calls to her mother for 911 cooking assistance.

What can I start with? She thought to herself. Let me begin a tradition of the morning breakfast, Femina tells me its the best meal of the day. 30 yrs later, she forges on. She has now established herself as the breakfast queen of the household.

Come 7am, the daughters, even to this day, line up with plates, hawk-eyed, close to drooling, waiting for her crisp dosas with chutney, or the occasional idli-vada-sambar, or rava-idli with sagu, or puri with kurma, or pongal with gojju, or akki rotti.....the dishes each full of delicious flavor and a scent of hard work.

The father walks in from his morning exercise around this time. He finds his family(not surprisingly) cloistered around the dining table enjoying their morning fix, topped with some hot steaming filter kaapi. The girls dont allow the mother to enjoy her creation, till she has topped the masterpiece with a steel tumbler of her special filter kaapi.

'Whats the thindi today?" he asks

There is a if/not flow chart here. If its upma, avlakki sorts, he will move on to other chores and indulge in breakfast at 10am. If he hears dosa, akki rotti etc, breakfast will be early. No one wants to wait to dig into wholesome goodness, do they now?