Our daily bread

Some things...the weirdest of things...trigger a memory. A random memory.
Like...some dough had gone bad (this is possibly a year back) and guess what memory it triggered? The first or second day of school, back in high school days when the school folks assembled a room full of 100-pg and 200-pg notebooks to be given to students. The smell of the dough going bad was exactly like the smell of the glue used to stick the jute/cloth binder that held the books together. One notebook caused you to wince, a sack full caused you to feel nauseous. A room full of such books caused you to get high and have distinctly horrifying hallucinations. Especially with the Mumbai rain out in full force and the smell of damp clothes and wet socks adding to the attack on the olfactory senses.

Obviously, the school got the notebooks for less in bulk and also avoided the premium, luxury notebooks for rich kids v/s blotting paper notebooks for the poor ones.
So everyone got the blotting paper kind.


Yesterday, I was reading my latest book "Fortune at the Bottom of the Pyramid" and there was a reference to a Mexican bread company...Bimbo!
Now any desi kid who grew up in India, especially in Mumbai remembers a few specific bread companies that operated back in the day of socialist raj- Wibs, Britannia and....Bimbo.
Each bread had a unique smell...mainly because of the yeast used to make it.
If you could afford it, you went for Britannia. Short on money? Buy Wibs and the days Britannia and Wibs was out, you bought Bimbo.
Still remember the white, blue and orange alternating squared wax paper cover.
We tried to find the loaf that seemed tightly packed. Basically it meant that roaches or lizards could not have made their way into the loaf. There were no coated wire ties or transparent plastic bags with plastic holds in those days.

I used to wait for those Sunday mornings when my grand ma would send me to fetch the premium bread while she cut slices of tomatoes, cucumber and made mint chutney and made awesome sandwiches. If I was lucky my grandma would let me have two sandwiches and half of a third one.
I remember making coffee icecream...basically I 'forgot' my strong milk coffee in the freezer overnight and then I'd wait for the 10 am cartoon show to start. In those days of DD1 and DD2 we didnt have the luxury of having fun shows right through the day. You got to see one...maybe two...interesting shows on a Sunday. I'd make sure that I spaced my sandwiches (or Maggie) right so that the last bite would be a min or two before that fun hr ended.
It was optimization of a simple joy.

In Malegaon, the small town where my folks live, premium bread was very hard to come by, back in the day. So the bread we got was made at the local bakery...simply called "Apni Bakery". It had the best naankatai, khaari biscuits and loose 'Nice' biscuits which he sold by weight. It was fascinating for a young city boy.
The bread wasn't always very tasty and the slices were really small. Possibly 2.5 inch square. Tiny. But the intriguing part was that it didnt come from some faceless corporation. It was made by the guy I spoke to at the counter.

The days have changed and my brain and senses are overwhelmed by a flood of bread choices- white, whole wheat, 5 grain, 7 grain, sourdough, baguettes, foccacia, and what not. But none has an association. Usually, I buy the same brand of bread but I'd be damned if I remember the name.

A simple thing...a simple trigger. A sweet memory.