The 2-minute Friend

A couple of days back, I had my first plateful of Maggi after leaving Cal in April. I had stayed away from it for so long, without any intention to do so of course, that a few days back, in office no less, I started having this uncontrollable urge to have some Maggi. Even though my small office has the facilities to cook Maggi in the pantry, I bug our peon with enough demands related to food as it is to ask the poor chap to cook Maggi now. As it happened, I managed to come home very early on Thursday, and cooked myself a bit of the priceless gift to mankind by Momofuku Ando.

It's heartening to know that in a world where everything is so different from when I was a kid, there are some things, like Maggi, that have not changed. I don't like the new flavors of Maggi - Rice Mania and what not - and still prefer the old Chicken and Masala varieties. Like old Doordarshan serials, or even visits to my old relatives, they remind me of simpler times.

I had the Chicken flavor on Thursday because the local Spencer's outlet did not have the Masala flavor in stock. I hope it's not been phased out completely. It reminded me of my school-days when one of the most important decisions that my sister and I had to make everyday was to decide whether we (I, for she was not allowed to use the gas stove on her own) would cook the Masala flavor (which I liked, and used to add more spices on my own at times to) or the Chicken flavor (which she preferred because it was less spicy, precisely why I did not care for it much). It used to be mostly Masala, of course.

And then she would drown her share of the Maggi prepared with such diligence by me in a huge quantity of ketchup, which I used to hate again. What's the point of spoiling the taste of something as good as Maggi with tomato ketchup? Just drink some ketchup instead!

My mother used to come back from work around 6:00pm, and our maid used to take a break after lunch till around 5:30. So, I used to be free to do anything I felt like till I went out to play. And I put this freedom to good use, mostly to do crazy stuff in my own room, but at times in the kitchen. Some of this time was used up in experimenting with Maggi. Eggs, vegetables, all kinds of spices, even milk - not everything I dished out was edible of course. But mostly the pride in having gone beyond the drab instructions on the packet would make up for the disaster in the saucepan.

Having all this Maggi also helped me have a huge collection of those cut-outs that entitled me to the whole lot of gifts that used to be on offer from Maggi, each worth 5 cut-outs.

Maggi has been like an old, faithful friend for most of my life. And to think I hated it the first time I had it, back when I was 5 or 6 years old. I never had it when I was outside India, but on a vacation back to India, a cousin of mine cooked some mean Maggi, and I fell in love with it. I convinced my mom to carry a few packets with us back to Iraq.

In engineering college, Maggi was one of the things available at almost any time of the day at the two Nescafe outlets in the campus. After late night talkathons, after long walks, or even after a great movie alone in my room on a cold night, a plate of Maggi could be relied upon to be waiting for you.

The canteen in my hostel in B-school introduced me to some new ways of cooking Maggi. I had written about this delightfully oily dish called Fried Maggi a few months back. There were other amazing forms of this simple food-item that those guys used to prepare and deliver right at my doorstep.

I plan to visit Cal sometime towards the end of this year or early next year. Guess what I'll be having at the night canteen?