But I miss food as I’ve known it all my childhood (most of my life has been childhood; I’m only twenty-two). Before adolescence, I hardly ate anything. The onset of changes that started my physiological alteration also changed my appetite. Mom’s cooking, the traditional Bengali-Northie combination, was something I could never get bored of after that, even if though I was eating it for years. The fish curry, the chicken, the veggies, almost everything she cook was irreristible, save for a few veggies I hated.

Then came college, and hostel life. And with that came a change of cuisine, since my University is in a different part of the country. The food in the mess was quite tolerable early on, to the extent that I even liked it. I don’t know whether it was the cuisine change that induced me to like the food, or the cooking itself which was good. But as time passed, my interest in mess food waned, and by the end of second year, I had begun replacing a few meals with egg. Street food, to be precise, only that most people eating the egg were my college-mates, out of the same compulsion as mine.

The decline continued, and third year saw me skipping more meals, and eating more junk food. And now, in my fourth and last year, food has become a liability. Walking from my room to the dining hall seems like one long trek, at the end of which lie some eatables which I must swallow and send down my oesophagus (sorry, but that’s how we were taught to spell it in school). I wish I could eat out more, but that’s too hard on the wallet. The reason for this disinterest is not only poor cooking, but also perhaps repetitiveness, for now even egg seems boring. Repetitiveness, which I never once felt at home.

I remember my pre-adolescent days, when I always used to leave a lot of food on my plate, to Mom’s apparent disappointment. It’s all happening again for me, and almost seems nostalgic, now that I’m writing about this. I’m already counting the days to when I’ll be able to eat Mom’s cooking once again. I can’t wait to graduate, I can’t wait to taste ‘Food’ again.