Moment of Zen in Japan

The painting I had seen was that of a outdoor party during a beautiful french summer day, during the early 18th century. It was one of those cold days one spends in book shops, while nursing a cup of coffee for two hours. It was a tidbit one stores away for later use, like a cow chewing the cud. In this painting were depicted men and women, all of whom were well-dressed in the way only the elite could. No one looked at each other. They all seemed to be in conversation, but lost in private thoughts. It was the 18th century equivalent of the statement "Lost in a crowd".

5 years later, I was in Japan for 3 weeks on official business. I took the trains back and forth to work from my hotel, to a small city outside Tokyo. One late night, as I was coming back from work, I looked out the window to see another train pause by my train for those precise 30 seconds that trains stop in Japan. Like a bizarre modern adaptation of that painting, the image jumped out at me. There were people standing, looking out blankly into space, or reading a book or sitting while lost in thoughts. Bills to pay, health problems, or that perfume in the store they just saw. The image hung in front of me as I took it all in. Then as the chance moment passed, the image disappearing in a blur of light and sound.


Civilizations change, the lone spirit still lingers in those private moments. That was my moment in Zen.

The Value of Take-out food

Take-out food can be monetarily evaluated, or by the memories it evokes. I remember the times, during my childhood, when we craved for breakfast or lunch from a local restaurant. I grew up in a little village a few miles from the dusty town of Trichy- at the tip of southern India. After a half day of nagging our parents, my sister and I would get the go-ahead. This establishment, a dingy little mud hut made some of the best idlis (rice dumplings) and dosas (crispy lentil pancakes) known to man. Well, I was twelve then, and the best idlis came from the only restaurant in our hamlet. On a hot summer afternoon, I would bike down the half mile to this restaurant, with a little container clanging noisily off the handlebar.

I would give the order to the manager of the restaurant, and wait around watching the patrons eating there. There were 4 wooden tables in all. The place was always crowded with construction laborers, bus drivers from the nearby bus station, and workers from the nearby factory. There was a 60-watt bulb illuminating the entire place which was on, no matter what time of the day it was. People liked to light up cigarettes, after a good meal. The stink of the smoke from the cigarettes and beedis (dried tobacco leaves rolled up into thin cylinders- an absolutely lethal mini-cigarette) mixed with the smoke from firewood emanating from the kitchen. There was a distinct smell to this concoction that I still go back to during barbecues half a world away. The walls of the kitchen and the one-room eating area were covered with a patina of soot. I awaited my take-out meal with an anticipation that only 12-year olds are capable of.

The best part was the packaging of "take-out food" in 1980 in rural India (also yelled out by the cook at the restaurant as "Parcell!!"). The soft, lily-white idlies were wrapped tenderly in a banana leaf. The chutneysdosas met the same fate. The steaming-hot fragrant sambar, of course, came in the steel container.

(tomato and coconut) were also wrapped in leaves individually and tied together with a jute thread. These 2 packages were again wrapped into recycled newspaper. The A shiver of anticipation would run down my spine, when I touched the warm food packets and put them into the wire basket that my mom had knit. Then I would race back home, narrowly missing the stray dog crossing the road just at that moment. When I got home, the four of us would sit down on the living room floor of our 1-bedroom apartment and open the packages. The aroma of the food would practically lift me and my sister a few inches off the floor. The food disappeared faster than the time it took to make it! Then we would roll the packaging materials into a bundle and toss them into the garbage bin outside the house. As the minutes went by, a cow would walk up to the bin and find the bundle. Within minutes, the bundle disappeared- paper, thread, banana leaf and all. In an hour, any record of our take-out food saga would end up in a cow-pie on the melting tar road in the summer sun.

In all, lunch for four cost 5 rupees (25 cents with then exchange rate). In the half hour we had lunch, we talked about everything. My dad would tell us a story about the time he almost had his foot broken in a field hockey accident. Then he lit up a cigarette in the house. Nothing good about the smoking though, he was to realize later in life.

22 years later, a month ago, I was in my sister’s house in an affluent suburb of Chennai- a bustling city of 7 million also in southern India. I was there to care for my father, now hospitalized for a quadruple bypass surgery. Decades of smoking had finally caught up with him. On a hot Sunday morning, I phoned in an order of the same idlies and dosas. Years of sandwiches from the McDonalds and Subways had still not dulled the magic of these divine treats for me. A young man delivered the food on his brand-new moped. I tipped him ten rupees (now 25 cents), which ended up to be about 10% of the cost of the lunch. Years of progress showed in the packaging of the food now. Everything came in transparent little plastic bags, crushing the anticipation that used to come with opening the packets. The only ones drooling in the house were the three dogs. There was TV running, where a game show was on. We ate our lunches in silence, while the TV talked. I neither saw the people who made the food, nor the patrons at the restaurant. My dad, after his heart surgery a week ago, was barely able to speak. To round up the contrast, I did not know what to do with all the plastic.