Writer Vinoy Thomas confesses that food is as important to him as words in which he dabbles.
The out and out foodie's words give us ample food for thought as he rambles on about his culinary weaknesses and preferences.
He talks about a recent Kozhikode datelined news report. It goes on to say how a man who bought a parcel of kappa biryani stabbed another man fatally after an altercation over the sale of the food item all because the kappa biryani which was supposed to be a meat-kappa combo had everything else except meat in it.
And all this while he thought Kozhikodan folks were such peace-loving souls. His intuitions were not out of place, however. For, on closer scrutiny of the report he understood that the man who had gone ballistic over the kappa-meat parcel was no Kozhikkodan, but someone typically from south or mid-Kerala, for whom food was everything.
He muses over his yen for food. Maybe it's in his DNA, he says. His forefathers were all hearty eaters. Give him anything that's edible and that's food for Vinoy. However, it's home-cooked food he'd die for. It's his mother's dishes that dance around him and of course their unmistakable taste. All the dishes were done up by his mother with such love in the midst of her other heavy duties. Nothing too exotic ever went into her dishes, but their flavour still lingers in his memory.
He recalls he was happy to disprove the story that had been doing the rounds that he wouldn't survive a day without meat or fish. It happened when he accompanied a group of students from Periya School to Gujarat to receive an award. Though it was vegetables everywhere in Ahmedabad where the team spent a few days, he enjoyed the veggie fare and topped it up with various milk-based goodies. He continued experimenting with the Gujarat style even days after his return. But as they did not turn up quite to his expectations, he went back to his old rustic style of dining…to meat and fish.
"Eat whatever you can. That's been my motto." This blind love for the "eat whatever you can" dictum once got him on the threshold of death, recalls the writer. Once, he bought a parcel of what looked like kappa biryani from an eatery in Perumbavoor. That was when Vinoy was working in Vellathooval in Idukki.
Feast over, he went across to the KSEB quarters for the night. Then began the rumble and the tumble. He started violently throwing up and leaking from the rear. Fearing that his strength was ebbing, he managed to crawl over to a colleague's quarters. But by the time he stumbled in, he had lost consciousness. "I'm still alive thanks to my colleague who rushed me to hospital," says Vinoy Thomas.
Getting back to his palate, he remembers that little shop right below Iritty bridge, run by Kunjambu, where they served such delicious dishes of "lamb brain." That hotel is history now. Though he's had lamb's brain from several other places, there's been nothing to match the flavour of Kunjambuchettan's lamb brain.