Dada's Sketchbook

Morning Dosa

As a schoolkid, I remember eating the same khichdi everyday before going to school. Summers, monsoons or winters; exam or not, the same watery porridge. Functional, easy to gulp down with just a few roasted cumin seeds that kept it from qualifying for hospital food. My equally simple worldview perhaps kept me from complaining much. In college though, breakfast was a crazy affair.

For a long time, we would eat from a mess operating out of an apartment on the seventh floor. There’d be a long queue of students for freshly cooked breakfast. The day the queue was longer, you’d know there’s dosa on the menu. So you’d wait, and salivate watching fortunate early birds leave with their plates of dosa and chutney while negotiating with yourself about whether the dosa was worth missing the last bus to college or if you should forget the dosa altogether and run with the colder idlis and bondas, in order to not miss your class. Inching slowly, it’d be finally your turn and if lucky you’d be able to choose from the plain, onion, egg and masala variants. You didn’t wait this long for the plain dosa did you? So there, the guy would splash water on the tawa, rub it off with the coconut fiber broom and add the oil. Skillfully, he’d lift the rice and dal batter and spread it on the tawa. The batter cooks at perfect speed, not getting burnt, the bubbles escape the surface, leaving behind a distinct porous texture, crunchy to the bite. The guy would take the spicy (mostly) potato masala, infused with few curry or methi leaves and rub it on the dosa. You’d ask for some more and he’d add 5 more grams of it and before you can complain, the dosa is ready, folded it into a tube, and served on your plate. Hey at least you got it!

The mice that have been running in your tummy for so long get introduced to the butterflies who’ve arrived, in anticipation of the steaming masala dosa dipped in a cold coconut chutney landing on your tongue. A match made in heaven indeed. So you break off the dosa, mix a little chutney and place it in your oral cavity (which by now is overflowing like the boiler room of the sinking Titanic) and boy oh boy has it been worth the wait, the missing of the college bus, the inevitable sour mood of the visiting faculty awaiting you. What do they know about the heavenly masala dosa, the hot tea and seventh floor cool breeze caressing your hair anyway? It’s the final taste scene from Ratatouille all over again.

Now there’s a canteen in college that serves pretty much the same dosa whenever you want. 

From a 2018 Sketchbook