It is Thursday today, an ordinary weekday. It always surprises me how weekends and Mondays are eventful while the other weekdays feel so routine, so lacklustre. Today, felt exactly like that, a routine repetitive day of work. After I was done with the day’s work, I reached home and asked my favourite question as soon as I arrived, ‘What’s for dinner?’ What answer would you expect on a ‘routine’ day in an Indian household? It was Khichadi!
Khichadi is full of commonness. We make it on ordinary days. It requires ubiquitous ingredients. Apart from the basic daal, rice, and spices, it can accommodate almost anything as an ingredient. Leftover vegetables, salads, sprouts, and whatnot – khichadi accommodates everything and eventually amplifies its taste with any added flavour. I don’t think you will find such a versatile dish in any cuisine worldwide! And yet, it’s kept such a low profile in our kitchens. With all these thoughts in mind, I started my dinner. The first spoonful of this hot, steamy, spicy khichadi brought back so many memories from the past.
It was somewhere around the year 2004-05. I was away from my friends for my internship in Mumbai, and a very close friend of mine was going through emotional turmoil. Cell phones were not commonplace then, and I had to call my friend daily from an STD booth. It was tough on my pocket, and I searched for money-saving ways. So, for every dinner, I started having khichadi at my usual restaurant. It was one of the cheapest dishes on the menu and was wonderfully delicious. For two months at a stretch, I had khichadi for my dinner and, with the money that I saved, kept my friend company on the phone!
Fast forward to another phase of my life when I was newly wed and a freshly graduated doctor. It was a happy, carefree time in my life! The two of us and some close friends would roam around the city every evening. We watched movies, shopped, and explored all the new food outlets. With my limited salary, we used to be out of money by 24-25th of every month. And then, for the remaining days of the month, until the next paycheck arrived, we survived on khichadi. Those were extraordinarily fun-filled times, as were our experiments with khichadi. The wildest among them, which I remember even today and laugh at myself for, was combining khichadi with chicken kebabs! But hey! it did taste good.
Once on a Diwali vacation, a few years back, we were on a trip somewhere in Rajasthan. One day on that trip, our bus broke down, and our schedule collapsed. It was impossible to reach our designated destination on time for dinner. Our tour manager decided to stop at a nearby dhaba and ordered khichadi and kadhi for everyone. I won’t forget having that hot spicy khichadi sitting on a ‘charpai’ under the sky on a chilly night.
Khichadi is an ordinary dish, like most of our ordinary mid week days. But because it is common and usual, it’s also a part of many special days and moments. It combines many different things and flavours, just like our lives. We need to learn from khichadi to make every flavour count and make every moment relishable and memorable!
