YOU WILL MISS YOUR BUS. Eat this quickly now,’ I say as I place piping-hot, aromatic, soft idlis and sambhar in front of the sleepy reluctant child. Idli-sambhar is one of my signature dishes and I pride myself on the fluffiness of the idlis I make. I can almost picture my mother and Meera Mausi nodding proudly as I pile the idlis on my son’s plate. ‘Maaa, I don’t want breakfast,’ he mumbles as he pushes away his plate and slumps on the table, closing his eyes. I know now why parents send their children to boarding schools. I have woken up at five thirty am to cook this traditional, nutritious and delicious meal. The easiest thing for me would have been to dump a bowl of cereal in front of the child. But I would rather that my family have fresh, hot home-cooked meals. I muster all the patience that mothers have on tap in secret reserve for such situations and say, ‘Darling, you have to eat. You know the rule, right?’ ‘Breakfast like a king, lunch like a nobleman and dine like a pauper,’ he parrots the words he had heard me uttering a few thousand times by now, his eyes still closed.
