inspired by Big Fish - the dead fish

At home, all of us had our own preferences on everything we do.. Now, coming to eating and particularly fish, I can think back and laugh loud at the fun we had..

Eating fish was a feat to me. Am totally no good at eating, first being the sight of it - its black color and glossy skin puts me off. So I demand white fish. And then, there are lot of prickly tiny vertebrae bones on them lands up horizontally on my throat and prevents me from screaming loud. And then comes the big white expensive fish, chopped into small pieces and this time with just one bone..and I make it a point to complain its taste. All others would make my tummy roll and grumble.
But others were all good at it.. Older sister prefers curry, younger one like fries and I like to count the number of teeth each fish has! Good that fish dies of dyspnea and gaping, or mom will have tough time opening it mouth for me :)

Mom grew up on fish every day, till she got married. She used to tell us her childhood stories of naadan-stylan meen-kootans and the yummy looking crispy fried fish cooking at her house. No day goes without one type of fish; if there is no raw fish, there is dry fish!! And poor mom got married to a pure vegetarian with a fanatically vegetarian family and tea-drinking took over every day fish eating! Good thing is mom did not forget her culinary expertise in making fish after all those years in Kerala and until we got to Chennai and every time we had cousins visiting, one day was reserved for chicken and fish lunch at home!

Dad is not against us eating what we all like. All he used to be concerned of is our liking for hair-cuts. His love for long hair is so fervent that he would point to girls with long hair and make us feel jealous about it. As kids we used to fall for his big big words of beautiful hair. He would try to coax us into eating well with stories on how his childhood friends or aunt at some remote place used to care their hair! Fish is the key.. and then would look at mom and say, “Look, even now the shine is on her hair! And look at yours.. dry and brown and dead!”. Am we kids would grab and force the poor fish into our tummies.. And then after fish, it used to be any thing we don’t want to eat.. lady’s fingers, some weird dal, drumstick leaves, some bitter greens and spinach.. The point was we managed to eat it just to get some nice dark and straight hair like mom! When we bothered about eating it, for sometime cod liver oil replaced them and making us smelly rather than the whole house smell cooked fish! And if both don't work, mom adds more fuel to the fire saying we all look like dad’s family and we would try to change that desperately :)

After sometime, all three of us wanted short and good looking hair than just plain and long! Dad was still the same and we grew up not to fall into the talking part. With dad’s declining hair lines, we used to hit back on him saying he should also take up eating fish and ladys’s fingers and palak (I doubt if he has ever eaten these at all..haha) to get back his curly black hair of handsome days.. but we were not that good at coaxing and it was always dismissed without any consideration! Dads are tough to change.. and of course, we were called little imps insolent to him :)