ABSINRAW

As long as I can remember, I am able to scroll through snippets of memories one after the other, like going through a social media feed. Unlike it, I haven’t been able to find a strong correlation between the grouping of these snippets. They can be triggered by something very simple, routine, and something quite obscure at times. Sometimes, these snippets are not even memories, but fragments of some dreams which I wasn’t able to recall the very next day.

The reason why I choose the word “snippet” for them is due to the clean cut (snip) that separates them individually from one another yet seamlessly woven together in no decipherable order. I am mentioning these snippets today because there’s one that’s a very frequent view these days.

As any person currently in their 30s, the concept of the balanced meal that includes protein, fiber and carbs has become new normal for us. Battling with the daily protein intake per portion (insert your food science theory and referred influencer/expert here) is a new struggle that we have taken upon ourselves. Eggs are the most consistent source that comes to our rescue. Each day as I peel the boiled eggs in the morning and slit them in halves (team yolk for me!), the mandatory yolk residue stuck on the knife, first reminds me of a ritual I’ve seen my mother follow in the kitchen whenever anything was deep fried. She always first takes a tiny fried morsel out of the oil and keeps it on the stove besides the cooking flame as the food offering made to the Fire God, before continuing the cooking. So, I couldn’t help but think the yolk residue as the offering to Knife God (quite possible in any mythology out there), before swiping it off to the bin.

This act always takes me back to a common hack that I saw at a roadside vendor selling eggs when I was in my early teens. He used to keep a white thread with one end tied to the crate, and pulling the other end to tighten and using the tension to slice the eggs. With that imagery, the reel flips to the snippet where I am back to that stall, with a friend who was the sole confidant to that place.

Like most of the regular households, he was a vegetarian at home, which means he could eat non-veg food outside his house, but it could not be consumed or cooked at home. This stall was our go to place. Each time my mother asked me to bring in eggs, a signal was exchanged while passing his house so that he could accompany me. It was there we discovered novelties like shallow fried boiled eggs garnished with chopped raw onion and omelette breaking boundaries by using more than two eggs at once.

This time, we had come prepared to accomplish a feat that has never been attempted before. To try how many boiled eggs can one consume in one go, a question troubled the young minds to the core. We had thrown around numbers a few days ago, and this day was the day of judgement. My friend had the tendency to back down at the very last minute, so we had discussed the plan in detail beforehand.

We were going to order eggs in stages. Stage 1 was 6 eggs, and then we would have increased eggs by 2 on each stage till someone won. As we were standing there at the vendor’s, upon the question asked by him to “How many eggs today?”, my immediate answer came an emphatic “6!” As we both turn to my friend, he looked constipated by mere thought of it and murmurs after taking a few seconds, “None for me today.”

At this betrayal, I lost my heart to admit it to the vendor that I was going to have it all there. He always parked his cart besides a bread factory which used to be pretty deserted even during daytime. We found a quiet area inside before I opened the wrapped packet to keep my end of the bargain, because nobody was waiting for these eggs at our respective homes. As I started gorging down one egg after the other, my friend kept staring at me as if witnessing a science experiment while taking mental notes of the results after each attempt. For someone who chickened out as usual, he was very keen on encouraging me to try one more.

When I finished the last one with a proud and winning smile on my face, he looked at me innocently and asked, “Shall we buy more?” On my way back home, I continued trying to keep weird burps in check while making a small mental note to never take his words at face value again. The next day, my stomach taught me about the nature of foods, and where eggs stand at the spectrum, via indigestion.

As this snippet ends, it’s time to eat eggs. Just two.