On sourdough and rice

It was in my early adulthood when I had that rapturous experience that is part of the common lot from ancient Egypt to modern Rome. I am referring, of course, to having sourdough dipped in salt and olive oil.

I was at the ambiguous age in my final year of university, no longer a child but not yet with the wisdom of years. Two other students were boarding with us. Until then, my knowledge of bread was limited to those white slices which were so feeble I could never understand their appeal. These were had during breakfast, and only after toasting and plenty of butter, jam or Vegemite. Imagine my surprise then, when one of my friends, beckoned us to their room and laid forth before our eyes a loaf of sourdough, a bottle of olive oil and salt.

My world was transformed in an instant. This was not how I knew bread. For that matter, this was not how I knew oil and salt either. I did not know what was happening but I did know I was in rapture. The sublime experience took me to the heavens. To use modern parlance, I was “hooked.” Sitting in that room that day with my friends, our doors closed, PlayStation at the corner, and taking food secretly in a time of the day not conventionally for meals, I had the feeling of criminals taking drugs. Whatever it was, I knew one thing with conviction - I would not trade places with Louise XIV and his Versailles for my sourdough with salt and oil.

Such was the joy of meeting an unfamiliar culture for the first time. But all of us, at some point, would meet our own heritage as one strange, as much a foreigner as a Mongolian monk to a boy in Venice. For me, that was my encounter with steamed rice.

Until the age of five, a meal consisted of steamed rice, cooked vegetables and meat. As with all little boys, the meat dish was what we looked forward to. The vegetables are great if they were fried. The steamed rice was the bowl we took with the dishes. The steamed rice was a constant, always necessary and always present.

One fateful evening found me sitting with dad waiting for the meals to be served. The steamed rice were already at the table, and hungry that I was, I was eager to start. Unexpectedly, mum declared “There’s an accident. The cooking isn’t done yet. You will have to wait for the dishes.” Alas! But there was nothing to be done. I was hungry and, with the steamed rice in front of me, my only option was to have it unaccompanied. In this unprecedented circumstance, something about the unremarkable steamed rice fell me like lightning.

That day was still as vivid to me decades hence. The family was cramped in a small table in a small living room. The table was bare but with the bowls of steamed rice. It was then when I realised it, and exclaimed “I love the plain rice!” Indeed, the steamed rice has this subtle, delightful, sweetness that I never noticed because it was always drowned out by the rice’s noisy siblings of meat and vegetables. By the time mum finished cooking the actual dishes, I was already full with rice. I needed nothing else.

I see the same with my child today. At the tender age of two, he has not yet outgrown his rice. His mum despairs when he disregards the food so lovingly prepared and placed in his bowl to go for the plain rice. When he is done with the rice, he wants more - of that plain rice. He will eventually forget his love of the plain steamed rice just as his brother before him. But if he is fortunate enough, his first love for rice will strike him at an unexpected time as it did his father many decades ago.

These old memories came to me because, due to some happy circumstances, I find myself with no other obligations than staying at home tending the house. And of tending the house, there were plenty to do. In my initial fervor, I tidied and took pleasure in the tidying. I rejoiced at the transformation taking place at our humble abode.

As I engaged in these activities, it occurred to me that ordinary life is like our staple food of sourdough and rice. The best and most beautiful things in life strike us like the first sight of dawn, or the kiss of first love. They then become a part of us, part of our routine, so much that they fade into background. It is only in chance circumstances they appear like a new star. Is it not like this with fresh air? When one steps into a country with clean air, one feel the elation of every breath. Yet two hours hence you would scarcely think of the air that so struck mere moments ago. It is only when you return to a polluted land do you then recall the fresh air that was missed. The joy of a new encounter, the familiarity and the forgotten preciousness until awoken by separation, this is the true mark of what is important in life. It is the food we have, the fresh air we breath, the freedom of a safe home, our life partner.

Staple food is ordinary because it was once extraordinary. The first ancient to have steamed a bowl of rice would have no less an astonishment than Archimedes with his “Eureka!” Rice is common not because it is cheap, but because it is the best, and in the democracy of ancients, mankind made the best cheap so the best could be made common. And if in having these common, we have forgotten their extraordinary nature, then we, perhaps, need the chance privation to see the extraordinary in the common once again.

There is a theological dogma that says bread, under the appropriate rites, transform into something greater. The usual objection is that such theory is too farfetched. Perhaps the objection should be that the dogma does not, in fact, go far enough. For it seems to me, in my childhood and now in older years, that with sourdough, every slice is sacred, and with rice, every grain the glory of life.