Such a cliché, I tell you.
For some reason, fact or faction, a woman turning to a bag of potato chips she would otherwise never consider, a food so junky it leaves behind a thin layer of oil on the fingers, is plain naivety. For it’s a mistake to think you can solve any major problems with just potatoes.[break]
And of course, there’s the good old ice cream. Nowadays, Baskin Robbins is available in containers so big you’ll probably bend the cheap Chinese fork you bought at Bhatbhateni Supermarket trying to pry it out of the bucket; because, also part of a cliché, a heartbroken woman will never sit with a small bowl of ice cream at the study table. No.
She has to be eating the ice cream directly out of the bucket, with the feet up on the lazy boy chair and clad in a loose sweatshirt and wearing bunny slippers, the ones that have ears hanging out of the sides.
I don’t get this. How is all this comforting?
If you notice however, guys, heartbroken or otherwise, don’t talk about comfort food. They usually just eat it. Basically, it’s the same stuff they eat every other day.
Have you ever seen a heartbroken guy wearing bunny slippers, slouched in front of the television with a bucket of Baskin Robbins in his hands with Michael Bolton playing in the background, or the sissy Jonas Brothers, just for good measure? No, you haven’t.
Actually, in those circumstances where a guy’s heart is being torn apart, you’ll see him reaching for a bottle which is perplexing, considering how often men use it as a substitute for comfort food.
But then, can a drink be termed a comfort food? After all, in times like these, given a choice between single malt and a bag of potato chips, only halfwits would reach for the latter for real men drink to drown away their sorrows while losers log onto Facebook and update their status.
Trust me, I know. Just like everyone else, my heart’s been broken a couple of times. Or wait. Was it more than a couple of times? Either way, in moments of crises, I too have put away almost half a bottle of whiskey in one sitting.
As you grow wiser, you’ll learn there are many things you could teach about heartaches other than the drinking bit. The first, you never ever whine about the bitch.
We’re living in a world today where lemonade is made from artificial flavors and furniture polish is made from real lemons. The only respite is that there’s still real food available for real men.
The entire point of comfort food is to make you feel better than what you were feeling before you ate, be it in the middle of the night, middle of a breakup or in middle of the Parliament hearings.
Well, maybe whiskey isn’t exactly comfortable enough to be drunk inside the Parliament during parliamentary hearings, but then right now we’re still debating whether it falls into the category of comfort food or not. Besides, most of our parliamentarians wouldn’t mind, I’m sure.
Ever wonder what vegetarians eat when they need to be comforted? Wait. Let me rephrase. Ever wonder what vegetarians eat?
By my definition, a vegetarian is a person who won’t eat anything that can have children. But with all due respect, even though human beings are cruel, they’re not born that way; they simply grow up to be.
If you don’t believe me, try putting a baby in a crib with an apple and a rabbit. If it eats the rabbit and plays with the apple, then you tell me I’m wrong.
But then again, not all vegetarians are plant lovers, either, and there are those who became vegetarians because they hate plants and not necessarily because they love animals.
I’ve vegetarian friends who can’t stand my dogs. Where’s the logic in that? But in case you’re a vegetarian and you’re reading this, take solace in the fact that heart attacks are God’s way of taking revenge for eating his little animal friends.
My wife, ever the charming storyteller, makes it a point to tell everyone that while we were climbing Dhampus during our Pokhara trip, all I ate or drank was Tuborg beer, claiming it was the trekkers’ choice.
She even claims that I drank Tuborg beer before I went to bed, before, and after dinner on the trail along the way, and at six in the morning the next day when the rest of the people were up on the terrace staring at the mountains and sipping black coffee and eating hardboiled eggs.
I know this to be a lie.
I even have the room service bills from Hotel Annapurna Lodge of Dhampus to prove it. I didn’t have Tuborg with boiled eggs for breakfast that morning. I had Everest Beer.
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