Salad. No other food is as classist as salad. When I was young it was saalaad, when I moved to Delhi, it became salaaad and now it is a very crisp accent saaladd. Salad for a long time meant onion, tomato and cucumber in summers and carrots were added in winters. You could arrange that in rows or grate or pile as you wished but that was it. That was all there was to salad. I felt like a chef the day I added pepper to it. I was around 20 if I remember right.
These days I make salads that have lettuce, micro greens, sprouts, fruits, dry fruits, nuts, jalapeno, green peppers, capers, corn, zucchini, bell papers, gherkins, dates and something called vinaigrette. I had to type that in google to check the spelling, meet me face to face and I will pronounce that in a way which will sound closer to gober raita than anything else. I only know that it is a mix of oil, herbs and vinegar or lime and honey etc. At, the end of it, it does look like a gobar raita.
I have some three salad bowls, I have two spatulas to toss salads, I have a separate glass dabba to take salad to office. I eat it with a fork and offer it to colleagues at the desk when they don’t have access to a fork. Once a colleague with a fork looked into the dabba and said she is a simple person and does not like all this fancy food. I am sure something swelled, in my chest.
The goal of life has been achieved. I am saaladd saying fancy food eating folk that you always aspired to be. One day another colleague asked me if I knew the Samkhya theory and we went on to have a chat. All the while I wanted to ask him does he know I have fermented cucumbers in my lunch box?
