As I look back at my childhood and my growing up years in India, I think I was an angel child for most part except one. Meal times! I was a monster during meal times for sure and I think I gave my parents, especially my mother the hardest time when I was little. 

Meal times in Indian families are generally a big affair and feeding the children can become an even bigger affair. It is common for parents or grandparents or the uncles and aunts to hand feed the children until they are older. Definitely older than the toddler stage and I have seen children as old as 7-8 being hand fed. If you compare it to the baby led weaning in this country where 4 month olds are supposed to feed themselves, forget the thought and don’t even go down that road. 

Every bribe in the book may be used for every bite the child takes, stories narrated, tv turned on and it may become a song and dance show too. The children are not just fed by the adults but the child and the feeder may move around as per the child’s whim and fancy. It is completely normal to follow the child outside the house, up to the terrace etc etc. Imagine my shock when I saw my in-laws with a bowl of rice following my kid on his scooter in the cul de sac as I came back from work one day! It was not funny and I had to do a mad scramble to bring the party inside and let them loose in the back yard. 

Anyway coming back to me, I think I was a definite challenge in the feeding battle. I was picky, shaky, cranky and unpredictable during meal times and generally hard to please. My mother was and remains an excellent cook and now that I think of it, basically anything she cooks is mind blowing. But starting at the age of 4, I had my own likes and dislikes. I liked to eat the food that my best friend’s mother cooked. Exasperated with my refusal to eat the home cooked food, my mom would have my lunch sent to my friend’s home. I would happily eat the food thinking my friend’s mother had cooked it. This became a habit for quite a while. 

The few meals I ate at home were Battles of Rice! I hated rice and even today it is not the most preferred food for me unless there is fish curry served with it and that is the only way you will get me to eat rice. My parents would try every trick in the book to get me to eat rice and there were days when I was told by my father that I couldn’t leave the table until I had finished the meal. I would be still be sitting at the table 3 hours later equally stubborn with a full plate. I would eventually fall asleep at the table and my dad would pick me up and put me to bed and I would have won that battle. Somewhere along the line he gave up after the first two disastrous tries to make me eat rice. How could one not like rice was his dilemma? Well I didn’t..

Then came days and a few years when I moved from the meals at my friend’s place to eating my Bhaiya’s food. Now who is a bhaiya? Growing up as an army brat, we always had a couple young men as helpers for my dad. The young man “bhaiya” would help my father but he also helped around the house. He would help keep the garden and take me to school and bring me back. Well my Ram Naresh bhaiya was the nicest and I was very attached to him. He would tell me stories and folk tales and I decided that he needed to share his food with me. So I would eat my bhaiya’s langar ka khana (cafeteria food) and the poor man shared generously. My mother who was at her wits end, would give the bhaiya the food she cooked while I ate his food. Bottom line, I think I just liked to help myself to other people’s food if I liked them. Thank god, I lost that habit along the way..

As I started elementary school and I think I was in second grade, I would take a lunch box and a little snack for recess and my mother would pack it diligently every day. To the shock of her life, the lunch box and snack box was empty every day when I got home. She would look at the lunch box daily after school and ask me if I ate and I would tell her what she had packed and that I had eaten everything. It was obvious I was lying through my teeth. How could a child who did not eat her meals cooked at home finish her lunch box at school. May be it was peer pressure my mother wondered, but it was a tough sell. Too good to be true she began to realize knowing my habits at home.

So much so that one day she asked my beloved bhaiya to spy on me and he did. The skunk spied on me during recess and lunch time and came right back and reported to my mother that “baby” was not eating her lunch or snack but feeding the stray dogs and the birds. By the way, all little girls were addressed as “baby” and boys addressed as “baba” when I was growing up. Well that was it, and my mother went and complained to the school principal that I wasn’t eating my meals and throwing the food away. My own mother went and tattled to the school principal! And so from 2nd grade through 4th grade, I had to eat my meals in the Mother Superior’s office. Everyday! Can you believe my luck? I was at a Catholic school and if Mother Superior wasn’t there, I would have to eat my meal with some other nun. No mercy on me..

It was a miracle that I still liked my bhaiya even after all the betrayal. By 5th grade, I had graduated out of Mother Superior’s office and eating with my friends under the watchful eye of the bhaiya. 

Thinking about what I put my mother through, I now know I was a nightmare. I know what goes around comes around, but I have been immensely lucky as a parent. Thank god my kids were not like me. My kids were easy babies and even easier to please as children. They ate everything I cooked and loved the food. The smarty pants I am, I raised them to eat all foods including the ones I disliked or didn’t eat. I didn’t want karma to take revenge on me and so I took extra efforts to prevent the nightmare I was. My kids do eat eggplants and celery and rice and a whole list of foods I don’t eat. All that education in nutrition put to good use. 

As for me, I have gotten slightly better. I have stopped eating other people’s food even if I love them.  I do eat the whole plate of cut-up fruit that my dad prepares for me daily or the 500 calorie milkshake he makes for me specially when I am in India. I do eat a couple bites of rice at lunch time when they ask me to eat and on occasions I have taken a bite or mouthful from the hand that comes my way to feed me even at this age. My parents still continue to feed me and now I cherish the gesture wholeheartedly. I do wish I lived closer to enjoy the love and care and today I will eat every bite of rice that comes my way.