What do you do when a co-passenger opens his lunch box and you get the fragrance of home made pickle? What do you do when you see a small kid having a paratha roll in his hand and from head to heel, smells of aam ka achaar?
Yeah yeah!! I agree with you, it takes you back to your childhood. I belong to a generation when the only thing that never changed was your "school lunchbox menu". Paratha had a special place in the lunch box and there use to be turns of each kind of achaar for 6 days a week. Of course!! Saturday used to be half day, but still lunch box is the only unforgettable thing in school bag.
It used to be summer vacations of complete two months. The hot summer days would be perfect time to get ready for the stock for whole year. One fine day, mom and dad would go to the wholesale vegetable market and bring kilos of raw mango. The next day, all the shiny green, oval shaped mangoes were chopped into infinite pieces. It was then mixed with all sorts of masala. The life of pickle and taste of it, both in my Mom's hands. The perfect measure of every spice, fineness in the work used to be rewarded for whole year. During summer vacations, we used to get ready for the next class, by wrapping our notebooks with brown paper, putting colorful nameslips to each book and notebook. I guess, it was my mom's way of getting ready for the new academic session.
Now that the humid, hot, damp month of July is going to end, and pickle is almost ready to be part of our lunch boxes :)
Time has changed, no more school, hence no more lunch boxes, but the fragrance of achaar is still somewhere locked inside. I miss those days, I miss you mummy, papa, I miss you dear sisters.
This achaar took me back to memory lane.... "Achaar nahi Atyaachaar hai ye to!!!"
Yeah yeah!! I agree with you, it takes you back to your childhood. I belong to a generation when the only thing that never changed was your "school lunchbox menu". Paratha had a special place in the lunch box and there use to be turns of each kind of achaar for 6 days a week. Of course!! Saturday used to be half day, but still lunch box is the only unforgettable thing in school bag.
It used to be summer vacations of complete two months. The hot summer days would be perfect time to get ready for the stock for whole year. One fine day, mom and dad would go to the wholesale vegetable market and bring kilos of raw mango. The next day, all the shiny green, oval shaped mangoes were chopped into infinite pieces. It was then mixed with all sorts of masala. The life of pickle and taste of it, both in my Mom's hands. The perfect measure of every spice, fineness in the work used to be rewarded for whole year. During summer vacations, we used to get ready for the next class, by wrapping our notebooks with brown paper, putting colorful nameslips to each book and notebook. I guess, it was my mom's way of getting ready for the new academic session.
Now that the humid, hot, damp month of July is going to end, and pickle is almost ready to be part of our lunch boxes :)
Time has changed, no more school, hence no more lunch boxes, but the fragrance of achaar is still somewhere locked inside. I miss those days, I miss you mummy, papa, I miss you dear sisters.
This achaar took me back to memory lane.... "Achaar nahi Atyaachaar hai ye to!!!"
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