CHENNAI : A little girl of maybe three years confidently pushed open the glass door and walked into a store one morning, her mother quickly locking her two-wheeler on the kerb and rushing in behind, holding the swinging door from hurting the child. The little one was all over the place, first picking a brinjal and then suddenly getting distracted, and possibly fascinated, with a newly arrived consignment of broccoli.
“Aahhh, green cauliflower,” she babbled, even as it slipped out of her tiny grasp. She shuffled out of the place, gravitating towards another basket, this time picking a bunch of coriander leaves. She was doing some kind of a role-play as if presenting the bunch like it were a bouquet of roses to a pile of coloured capsicums. She then tried reaching out for a cardboard box and asked her mom, “What is this?” Suddenly, the young mom sprinted towards her daughter and stopped her in time from grabbing it, but getting her dupatta torn in the process.
“What is that?” the girl repeated her question, not knowing whether the mother was angry because she was fooling around or because she had taken possession of the wobbly cardboard box somewhat held together by a loose rubberband and a lot of willpower.
“This is yucky. Do not touch it,” said her mother.
“But what is in this box?” the girl insisted on knowing.
“I am telling you, there are eggs in it. Do not touch it,” was her terse response.
I stood still, too shocked to even key in my pin number of the credit card that had been swiped.
I wanted to give the mom the benefit of doubt as I felt she probably did not want her daughter to mess around with the eggs, lest they crashed on the floor.
But I need not have given her any benefit because she called out in a raised voice, “Don’t touch that, EVER. It is yucky and we do not eat that.”
So much for the new-age mom. But isn’t food a personal choice? Yes, we opt for the “no onion, no garlic” vegetarianism. Well, not really go the Nirmala Sitharaman way! But just to ensure we do not burn our purses at this point of time. But look at the mother’s reaction. Ban begins early. Indoctrination begins at the foetal stage, it seems. Don’t eat this, don’t drink that. Beef ban, liquor ban…ban, ban. Ban. This is the new fearsome three-letter word in our country.