Can Your Love For Food Take You To Places?

Apurva Purohit, group President of Jagran Prakashan Ltd who also happens to be the author of the national bestselling book 'Lady, You’re not a Man – the Adventures of a Woman at Work', published in 2013, shares an interesting story of her husband and his love for food.

The husband wants to relocate to Cochin! Why you may ask? Has he discovered communism? Does he perchance like the climate of Cochin? Or maybe he is enamored of their 3 day weeks (the balance days are spent in strikes or bandhs or in general drinking and merry making I am told).

Well, the answer is none of the above. What has occurred is that on a recent market visit to this estimable city he has discovered LULU Hypermarket! Spread over some 80,000 sq. feet it apparently is supposed to be the largest hypermarket in all of Asia. And, to add further joy to the entire proceedings, it has a 20,000 sq feet kitchen where everything from fried chicken legs to Delhi Chaat to Hyderabadi biryani is made, in garganomous proportions and with assembly-line precision!

Added to that is a fresh market with, at the very least, a hundred varieties of fish and an equally large range of mangoes as per husband’s worshipful description. This, of course, is a delightful gastronomical, physical, psychological and sensorial overload of experiences for any foodie and since the husband is the Emperor of foodies, he has decided that his spiritual home is Cochin; as close to LULU Hypermarket as possible.

25 years ago my mother told me to marry a man who loved and enjoyed food, which according to her, was a metaphorical equivalent of loving life (as you can figure out, she is a foodie herself) and he would keep me happy.

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However, I do assure you that this obsession sometimes becomes a bit too much to handle. So at any cross road, in any part of the world, at any time of the day or night, if we happen to see a cartload of watermelons, oranges, ground nuts, etc, we have to make a pit stop regardless of how much the fridge may be overflowing! Before networking with the CEO next door or reconnecting with a childhood friend he first builds up an enduring relationship with all fruit-wallahs, fish-sellers and meat vendors, in a half kilometer radius around the house when we move to a new location. In fact, the umbilical cord he found the toughest had to break, was the one with his favorite fruit wallah in Mumbai who had been supplying fruit to him for years, at horrendous prices, thereby building a palatial house for himself with the spoils!

Both of them, for very different reasons, wept copious tears at the parting and have promised to remain in touch forever (I suspect the first number on husband’s speed dial is still of that fruitwallah). Nevertheless, in the long run, the balance sheet has worked in my favor, so I am quite happy to submit myself to the smorgasbord of culinary delights that come my way as a consequence.

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