My mom makes incredible Kootu. It is a South Indian vegetable stew.

As a kid, I hated eating it. It is usually made with a coconut base and I hated anything with coconut in it. I tended to avoid eating it altogether and if I was forced to, I would eat very little.

As I grew up, my taste buds developed and on one occasion when I went home from my college hostel, I had kootu and l discovered something radical. I loved it!

I was no longer living at home and I could no longer have it when I wanted. 

My mother is a great cook and Kootu is often not on the top of my list whenever I go visit her. As a result, I end up having it perhaps once a year or even less frequently. 

There was a time I could have had it but I did not have an appreciation for it.

Then there is this time when I appreciate it but I cannot have it.

In one’s youth, one has time and energy but is taught to remain in the quest for money and vice versa. How fucked up is the world we live in where we cannot teach people to appreciate what they have? We constantly teach them to seek out what they do not.

Lucky are those people who can appreciate what they have. Those who find joy in the things that surround them.