MIDDLE
Fast Food

time was when wives kept a fast for the longevity of their husbands. time was when young girls of marriageable age kept a fast in the hope of finding a suitable match for themselves. time is that when i asked my daughter-in-law whether she did any such thing for her husband, she shot back, pointing at my son, ``did he, for me?'' i am talking about those times. hers was a tuesday fast. this fast had certain dos and don'ts. dos allowed her to have the evening meal after sunset, and juices, cola, buttermilk and fruits during the rest of the day. don'ts included grains, wheat, pulses and vegetables or, to put it briefly, anything that would qualify as a meal in the conventional sense. soon i began to notice a pattern in these fasts. while most people entertained on weekends, we were calling people on monday nights. i also observed that the menu on these occasions was turning out to be disproportionately lavish for the occasion. it did not take very long to establish the logic. a well-lined stomach on monday nights made the next day's punishing routine a bit easier. this was not all. gallons of cola, buttermilk and juices were consumed during the fasting day, interspersed with mangoes and apples. it was turning out to be an expensive farce for something a higher force, or i, alone had any control over. then there was this evening prayer of a special variety, in which one could get up any number of times to shut the running tap, answer a phone, and reprimand an errant domestic help. one could shut and open one's eyes at will. i generally took a global view of marital harmony and let these pass. tuesdays became the dining-out days in one dhaba or the other because after the whole day of `farcing', where was the energy left for cooking the evening meal? immediately after her evening prayers and my rum and coke, we would drive off to one of the delhi's many dhabas with quaint names like pindi, have-more, kake da, etc. we were always the first to arrive when the owner-chef was still chopping the onions. life drifted into a long and oppressive delhi summer and she could not wait for the sun to set. she jumped into the car as i returned from work one tuesday and declared she was too hungry to wait any longer. she took to praying in the car on the way to the eating place and with one eye shut and the other on the road, gave directions to turn right or left with her folded hands. a swirling of hands meant a sharp left or right turn towards the direction indicated. she would touch her forehead with her folded hands at the end of her prayer and the first thing she would utter, ``i think i will have butter chicken today''. with rum and coke denied in the evening to the foot soldier, i decided to take charge. the saga of fasting ended with an episode called pregnancy in medical terms.