In times of distress, I eat bread. It might be a bagel, slathered in thick layers of yellow-gold butter, or pound cake, flour sifted with sugar until it is dense and sweet, drying me out as I shovel it into my mouth in the afternoons. I am, unequivocally, an emotional eater. Normally my diet of salad and fish makes my body feel good; I do not diet, but I am certainly careful, consuming what is designed to help me run faster, think sharper, live better.
On bad days, I throw it all out of the window. I let the weight of the carbohydrates settle in my stomach, eating when I am full just to inhale a bite of muffin with a chocolate chip in it. After work I will eat ramen noodles, possibly straight from the saucepan. I have never been good at cooking, disinclined to spend so much time preparing such a small offering, but now, I tend the stove like a lover, anticipation building until I can bite down on the thick, chewy strands of wheat.
Part of it is the waiting. I am terrible at handling the uncertain, always intractably impatient to the point of irritation (others with me, and me with myself). Eating becomes something to do with my hands while my mind is racing, a way of concentrating on something else outside of the maelstrom in my head.
Part of it is comfort. There is something soothing about the warm soft loaf, the sharp ridges pressing into my palm as I bring the knife to the crust. There is the nostalgia of childhood buttered toast and late night sourdough slices after nights out in the city. There is a deep sense of safety in hot food and a full belly and a life without hunger.
Part of it is my blood. I was raised in an Indian family where food was love. We ate parathas at breakfast; on special occassions they’d be stuffed with fennel seeds and potato, dipped in sour yoghurt. We had rotli with our curry, mopping up the thin, orange oils that cooked our foods with the bread. I learnt to pound the flour into little balls, roll it out under the pin, lightly flip it into the pan and watch the layers puff up in perfection. I have walked away from that relationship with food. I get frustrated when my aunts want to take pictures of me eating, a souvenir to flaunt in front of other relatives that says “she came to our home!”. I get irritated when we spend hours deliberating over dinner, when we eat the same 5 meals all the time, or when nobody can tolerate being hungry for half an hour and we have to stop at a service station for a snack, 30 minutes from home.
But when I am stressed, when the waiting becomes too much, I turn back to food, to the hot puris and oily theplas and sweet pouruns. There is way it fills the time, the way in which it provides comfort. But there is always the way in which it takes me back to a version of myself I don’t see so often anymore, the one that lives at the very core of me. The one that eats a lot of bread.
