An ode to Maggi

Blog Marathon Post 15

She looked into the pan as her mamma crushed the maggi and put it into boiling water. Masala was added next and the mixture was stirred into perfection. She waited for that two minutes to get over, with her mouth watering over the thought of her tasty snack.

"Mummy bhokh lagi, bas do minute! School se aate dhoom machaate
Ek hi baat pe manaate, Maggi Maggi Maggi!" - A jingle that we all have grown up hearing.

Maggi had always been my favourite junk food. During my childhood days, it was eaten once in a while, as a snack or when I was hungry at the odd times. I have a story of messing up maggi when I tried to cook it for the very first time :) Can someone go mess up maggi too? Yes, I did :) I read the package instructions so thoroughly that I timed my maggi and it ended up uncooked. Mom had to cook it again to make it edible. :|

Some years later, Maggi became my staple food. I was doing my internship in Mumbai, and I used to eat Maggi everyday, read "everyday" for dinner. I tried to experiment with Maggi a lot those days. I tried adding different veggies, scrambled eggs, etc. to make more tasty/healthy :) I never got tired of it and it was always the safest option. You can't mess up Maggi really. Can you? Oh ok, everyone is allowed one mistake in life, right?

During my MBA days, I discovered a whole new facet of Maggi. The whole economy of my B school survived on Maggi. We had plain maggi, veg maggi, egg maggi, onion maggi, fried maggi, chesse maggi, tomato maggi and any other variety of maggi which you can think of. We had all the eateries in our campus competing with each other to provide as many varieties of maggi as possible. Had maggi not been discovered, I think many of our batch mates would have gone without food for days :) Fond memories of those days include going to have maggi in the nearby eatery as late as 3AM in the night(or morning, whatever you want to call it), skipping dinner all together so that we can have maggi late into the night and having maggi for lunch, dinner, midnight snack or whenever we feel like. I told you, the whole economy survived on maggi :)

After a long hiatus, I had maggi three months ago in US. It was late into the night; I was too tired to cook anything and hungry. I looked through the cupboards, and found a maggi packet up in the shelf. Viola, I cooked it in no time and my favourite 'junk' food was ready. While digging into it, I remembered my days in B school and internship days when I survived solely on Maggi. I was so happy that day, as a little child who found her lost toy back.

Maggi, no matter how many McDs/CCDs or Baristas come up, no matter how much McVeggie try his best to lure me, no matter how much more packaged/ready-to-eat foods market themselves, you will remain my favourite junk food. I promise, no one else will take your place. Three Cheers to You, may you continue spreading your charm in two minutes always :)

What is your favourite maggi story? C'mon, don't tell me you don't have a maggi story, everyone has one :D