That too was a time 🥀
Until 1990, based on personal observations, our elders and people around us used to make chutney and eat it with tandoori bread. To make this chutney, coriander, mint, leaves of wild herbs, green chilies, salt, and tender leaves of grapevines were mostly used. Tomatoes were used very rarely.
I also saw people breaking whole onions by hitting them on the bed’s leg and eating them with tandoori bread. If there were no vegetables available, they would eat the bread with pickles or jaggery.
Curry was mostly made when vegetables started growing locally in the village. Vegetables were not available in shops. Our village had two neighborhoods: the lower neighborhood and the upper neighborhood.
There were a total of two shops in both neighborhoods where jaggery, sugar, lentils, etc., were available.
Meat was available only when someone’s animal was slaughtered. Animals were slaughtered when they were sick, otherwise, meat was available during weddings and Eid, or when a guest arrived, the host would have the mosque’s Imam slaughter a chicken and it would be cooked.
Bread was rarely made on the griddle; every household had a similar lifestyle, even the construction of the houses was similar.
There were mud houses with mud walls or fences made of dry bushes.
Interestingly, people were happier back then compared to today’s people. There were no economic worries, everyone in the village got food in one way or another, there were no beggars in the village, only the children from the madrasa would come in the evening to collect bread.
We ourselves, Achoo, Akro, Isa Musa Ataullah, Tabu, Shoko, Liaqo, Bao Jhao, Zallu Tari Bashiro, and many others.
In the afternoon, we would attack any jujube, jamun, guava, mango, or mulberry tree and eat the fruit to our fill. We would suck the thick sap, eat oranges, and even eat the gum from the acacia trees, eat raw vegetables, and roast and eat corn.
But we mostly got food only twice a day… around ten or eleven o’clock or before it got dark in the evening.
But today’s times have changed a lot. Our childhood has been buried somewhere in the pages of history. Sometimes, when such a picture appears, that era comes before our eyes again.
As Professor Dr. Ataullah Ata said,
“Ram Diyala, after you,
High high balconies,
High high floors,
Tall bushes and brambles,
Climbed sometimes,
Climbed on hot summer days,
Leaned on the rooftop edges,
Bright clouds, refreshing drizzle,
New courtyards,
A sea of beds and wheat,
Wind and swings,
God’s syrup under the teeth,
Soft sugarcanes,
A broken, wonderful country,
People burnt in front,
After you, Ram Diyala.