Deep Fried by Vijayalakshmi Sridhar
Volume 3 | Issue 4 [August 2023]

Vijayalakshmi Sridhar

Volume 3 | Issue 4 [August 2023]

I spotted him on the 7.20 am local service to Avadi immediately. Pot-like belly that swelled in the front and hung low until his thigh, face bloated with the ears protruding out of the skull. Only the trunk was missing. But his fat arms compensated for the girth and width. Biju looked just like Pillayar or Ganesh, the Hindu God of beginnings.

“Had a hearty breakfast?” he enquired, stuffing something from a paper packet into his mouth.

He made the same inquiry during lunch. The third call for the day would be after dinner when we complained to each other of the system and process inefficiencies, with him at the factory and me at the HQ of the same organization. Sometimes when I tried picking his brain with a few corporate accounting conundrums, he would shut me up with a crisp ‘Be a cog in the wheel.’

When we had met after twenty-seven years, with Biju in Muscat and me in Chennai, both institutional chartered accountants, the plan was to start a consulting firm together. If we had, we would have seen each other more regularly.

Sitting beside him on the train, I peeped into the packet. Cutlets! At 7.20 am. His wife couldn’t have been just melodramatic!

‘Since his return, he is wherever oily snacks are – street corner bhel, Hanuman temple vada, sowcarpet kachori,’ his wife had called last weekend to complain to me in confidence. In addition to snacking at work, on the commute, like today, he was always eating at home too, she said, while watching potboiler movies, IPL matches, live relays, and unending reruns.

Artwork – Manjima Gupta, 2023

‘Please have him over on weekends,’ his daughter had begged me because he was ordering around the fifteen-year-old to deep-fry frozen chips and spicy groundnuts when his wife refused to do his bidding.

‘Seriously, Biju?’ I snatched the packet from his hand.

Biju’s eyes widened in shock-surprise, hand paused mid-air.

‘Come on; you don’t want to die of clogged arteries at 52,’ I argued.

‘Why would I die, Aruni? My heart is full, happy.’ With a cloth handkerchief from his trouser pocket, he wrung his fingers clean and dabbed at his mouth.

‘This is not…’

‘Your wife is willing, so you get everything home-made and packed and nice; I have no choice but to buy.’

Nostrils flaring in indignation, he snatched the packet from my hand, getting back to eating, leaving me with oil-soaked hands and a wounded ego.

Biju’s childhood home used to be a choultry of sorts. The independent bungalow that stood on three-and-a-half grounds of ancestral land used to be crowded with his parents, three younger brothers on the couch, and cousins who stayed with them. In addition, people from the streets, rickshaw-wallahs, pushcart vendors, ironing guys would relax on the cool red-oxide floor and the lengthy corridor that faced the Besant Nagar beach. New faces would keep walking through the big teak doors. ‘All they need is a place to crash,’ Biju would say without any apprehension.

After the crowd cleared out in the morning, before we cycled to the college and ICWA evening classes, his mother would come to coax a bowl of food down Biju’s throat: curd rice and fried papad, rice upma with mint chutney and gram dal mixture, hot dosas and idlis and Pongal with vadas. ‘Just a couple more mouthfuls,’ she would keep forcing, long after Biju had begged her to stop. Did all the force-feeding sow the seed for Biju’s overeating now? Perhaps his mother’s death had left him feeling lonely? Was there a heart that was broken and crying secretly?

Artwork – Manjima Gupta, 2023

The cooling breeze was a relief after the day’s severe heat. The plush cream couch my wife and I had bought a few months ago sagged with Biju’s weight. Like a wet grinder, he was stuffing handfuls of stale bhujiya from a packet he had fished out from the back of our kitchen cupboard. On his way here to meet us, he had got down at Ambattur station to have a plate of alu bondas.

All through the week whenever I had managed to catch the 7.20, Biju was either coming out of or was about to go into a snack break.

I felt completely ill at ease to launch into a discussion again. Men’s friendships thrived around silly jokes and loud, hearty laughs. They lacked the why-how-what-when approach to crises. Or perhaps enjoyment was the word that tripped me. I felt what he felt. With two kids and a life that revolved around a solid routine, like many others our age, he might be feeling overwhelmed. It was a devil-may-care attitude that came with accomplishment.

I wished I had some solid reckonings regarding unhealthy snacking to walk him through. But all I had were only mixed experiences that still eluded my understanding. My dad and his brothers used to be disciplined eaters. Yet all four of them had health complications and died young. My wife’s family swam in ghee-fried puris, swallowed modakams and sweet Pongal by kilos, slurped thick, fatty buffalo milk sweets and ghee throughout their lives. In fact, at ninety, every night, her grandmom went to bed only after having a cup of ice cream.

As my wife put it, ‘Biju will learn soon or never.’

I circled the couch, stood behind my dear friend, and gently put my arm around his shoulders, pulling him closer.

Without any hurry, Biju stuffed a palmful of bhujiya into his mouth, and then turned to look at me..

Artwork – Manjima Gupta, 2023