Munchies

After a long day of tripping balls and picking olives, we walked into the house just past sunset and Elektra was pulling out a dish from the oven. It smelled like warm heaven. Aubergine, baby potatoes, peppers, cheese, beans, tomatoes, I could differentiate each and every smell given the heightened state of my senses. She’d also put a few actual chilli peppers cos I made a special request for spicy food. I finished a long warm bath and came out to dig in. And my first bite had a big chilli pepper.

I cried both in joy and pain. I wanted it so bad, I needed it like never before, but this was fire. The flames coming out my mouth, I wondered if anyone else could see, or if it was just my imagination. My rockstar boss Strato handed me some cream cheese and said, here, this will help. So I took a big bite. And yes, it did magically help. So I took another bite of chilli.

More fire.

I continued taking alternate bites of chilli and cream cheese and I was enjoying this almost like a fetish. Yeah, I think that qualifies as a fetish.

After gobbling down half my dinner, I casually pulled the fridge door open. And I saw a bottle of strawberry extract, which I promptly spread over a cookie and sent down my throat. Very nice indeed, but it wasn’t what I wanted to finish the night with, for my mouth.

So I ate some more of the baked goodies and then took another big hit of chilli and cheese. My god this was addictive.

Again I cry. This time I run to the freezer to shove my head in. And I notice a big tub of ice cream, and stick my tongue to the container to cool it down. My fingers pry open the lid, and inside this big tub there’s four segregated flavours of ice cream. I translate the writing on the lid – cacao, caramel, banana, and vanilla.

My mind’s already made up about which flavours to try – but I try them all anyway.

That’s when Elektra says ‘nobody here eats ice cream, you can eat it all’.

clockwise from bottom left – banana, caramel, vanilla, cacaaoooo

I can tell nobody eats ice cream there cos it looks untouched. Nobody eats meat, sugar, or consumes milk in the house. Damned hippies.

Strange as it seems, my life has been devoid of ice cream since Pondicherry 10 months ago, where I teach yoga and eat ice cream at the greatest ice cream store by the promenade. The greatest ice cream in the world, i might add.

 

In fact, my system has forgotten all about ice cream too, and dairy and meat, given the fact that the last month was spent on a deserted island – where there’s no roads and no electricity and no butcher and no shops. And no people, fuck yeah.

So the ice cream, it sets off alarm bells to my taste buds.

I confirm, ‘I can finish it all? Are you sure?’

‘Yes. If you can.’

‘Oh, I can. I can’, i hear my mouth respond before my brain could.

I’ve gone through one spoon each of all the flavours, testing, testing, and now I’m certain I’ll stick to cacao and caramel, anything more is greed.

The tub is 5 KG. The 15 year old math wizard in me jumps out and numbers pop.

5 kg for 4 flavours makes it 1.25 kg per flavour that gives me 2.5 kg of the 2 selected flavours to be completed in less than 24 hours cos my work in the olive groves is finished and my ticket back to the mainland is the next evening. So maybe 500 grams over 5 meals in 24 hours. Which means i eat only ice cream next 5 meals.

And now that my body knows ice cream is within arm’s reach, its screaming to me – little voices from every corner of my stomach and heart and kidney going ‘ICE CREAM ICE CREAM YAYYY ICE CREAM’ little strands of DNA doing the happy dance ‘ICE CREAM YAYY’ african drums playing in the background ‘YAYYY’.

So I make myself a big bowl for dessert right after I lap the final bits of my dinner. Ice cream topped with hazelnuts and almonds. I do a ritual dance before i dig in.

I go through that like a rollercoaster and the circle of spliff comes to me.

‘Thank you God for the good life’, I whisper my gratitude to the universe.

I waltz to the kitchen with the empty bowl and fill it again, almost like a robot. No thinking, only doing. This time there’s crunchy paksimadi, two big spoons of tahini poured over, and a handful of dry fruit. All this on top of four big scoops of my ice cream.

The beautiful parents of Elektra look at me like ‘are you ok?’, definitely they think my sudden 100x jump in appetite this evening is strange.

I do not want to tell them what I was tripping on the whole day, cos I know they don’t approve of anything apart from mountain-grade charas. Only organic matter is allowed into the system. So I stay mum and flash a big smile with ice cream and nuts and tahini stuck in my teeth,

‘ya ya, im goof’, I bite.

Brain-freezzziiINGGGGGGGAAAH. AAH. NNNNGGGG.

The mountain grade comes back to me and I nourish myself with shiva power or kundalini or manali or mohammadali or whatever you like to call it.

I’m already planning next morning’s breakfast when I pull long deep hits into my belly. Mix of warm fumes and cold cream. God is in the little things.

*sigh*

It’ll be the same bowl, I think for breakfast. With apples, bananas, dates, figs, and whatever else I can get my hands on. Oats. Yes, oats too. Avocado? Yes why not. It’ll feel left out if I don’t.

Maybe ill fry the whole thing in Grade-A Cretan olive oil. Maybe lunch will be the same with some salad on the side.

Oh my God. Demonios.

By now I know a deep subconscious trigger has been set off. Like olives raining all around me. Like vultures circling prey. Like tahini mixed into ice cream. Like watching the sun drop into the sea from a high point.