A couple of days ago, I had gone into the hospital admin office to issue a few prescriptions. While doing so, I found myself complaining to our team secretary that it had already been a very busy day in clinic and, despite it being well past three in the afternoon, I had not had anything to eat.
She looked genuinely sorry for me and said she did not actually have any snacks with her. Then she picked up a mandarin orange and offered it to me, saying that was all she had at the moment.
I declined the offer and explained the real reason why I did not want the fruit. Not because I disliked mandarins, but because I tend to avoid fruits that require any form of effort. I much prefer berries and grapes.
Her eyes softened momentarily.
"I don't mind peeling it for you," she said.
The offer genuinely took me aback. Sitting in that office in the northwest of England, my mind was instantly transported back home.
Because as far as I can remember, food has always been a major part of how people in my life communicated care. Maybe it is simply the Malaysian way of expressing affection.
As a child, and even well into adulthood, whenever I am home, someone will always cut, peel, salt and provide me with a side dish of green apples after meals.
First it was my paternal grandmother. Now it is my mother. My late father used to crack open crabs and patiently peel out the sweet flesh for me, so much so that I still do not know how to do it myself.
Growing up, I also had an odd and stubborn habit of insisting on reading storybooks during lunch. Fearing that I would one day choke on my food – or perhaps because she genuinely believed that food eaten absent-mindedly would somehow not stick to the body, in the ways grandmothers used to believe in quirky things – my grandmother hand-fed me for years, well into my teens, just so I could keep my nose buried in my books.
My mother always bought me the blue packet Hup Seng Teddy biscuits when I was a child.
Now that I live away from Malaysia, she still buys them every time I come home. I also remember our arguments over crisps.
My favourite crisps in the whole wide world were always Mr Potato, but somehow my mother could never remember that my favourite flavour was tomato.
Other food memories come to mind as well, woven deeply into our festive seasons. My aunt always made sure she put extra potatoes into the customary Deepavali chicken curry because she knew I would happily eat the potatoes and ignore the chicken.
To this day, chicken curry potatoes remain my favourite. Every Deepavali season, my mother's Malay colleague from the school where she taught would inevitably appear at our doorstep carrying her legendary chocolate moist cake. She did not have to do it. She simply did. And every year I eagerly waited for it.
Even now, my aunt still walks around the neighbourhood on Deepavali day handing cookies to our Chinese neighbours. Usually my mother and aunt will also pack some for the garbage collectors. Come Chinese New Year, cookies arrive at our house in return, though these days they are usually store-bought.
A colleague of my mother's who retired many years ago still visits every Chinese New Year with Mandarin oranges.
Likewise, every Deepavali my mother goes to his house bearing cookies. My mother herself has been retired for eight years now. Some habits and rituals simply refuse to disappear.
Then there was our next-door neighbour of more than 50 years. Throughout my childhood, she would call out over the dividing stone fence and appear with a container full of some dish or other.
More often than not, breakfast was sweet upma, and to this day hers remains my favourite. In the afternoons or evenings she might arrive with onion cucur instead.
Whenever my mother or aunt returned the containers, they would make sure to send them back with something nice inside as well.
Last year she suffered a stroke and moved away to live with her daughter. She can no longer cook. Yet when I think of her, it is still the sweet upma I remember.
Food. The language of love, care and community that surrounded me throughout my childhood in my quiet corner of Malaysia.
For the longest time, I thought it was uniquely ours. But sitting in that office in England, listening to a colleague offer to peel a mandarin orange for me, I realised perhaps it is not.
Perhaps food is simply one of humanity's oldest languages.
Different countries may speak it differently, but the message remains remarkably similar: I care about you. Have something to eat.
