COMMENTARY, April 2 — Homecoming can be a relief or a readjustment.
After living abroad for some years, be it for study or for work, returning to our beloved tanah air can either feel as though you had never been away or it can be a culture shock if enough has changed in your absence (or perhaps it is we ourselves who have changed).
I find the celebration of the former and the remedy for the latter are one and the same: Welcome home with some delicious Malaysian food.
Something familiar and basic. Light yet fortifying. And, of course, very sedap.
For my family, the caramelised crust of a roti pisang is both sweet and nostalgic. Sure, the generous handful of granulated sugar elevates the sliced bananas within but it does more than glaze the exterior of this local flatbread.
It is the taste of a childhood spent in a small town. It is the taste of a first date, when wallets were lighter (and let’s be honest, they still are, given the economy) and we could stay up later to drop by some gerai malam.
Now we are older and our hours are more regular. Early to bed, early to rise. The bird that wakes at dawn catches the choicest of worms, after all.
In our case, this means reaching the roti canai stall before the morning crowds appear, when there isn’t a queue and we can enjoy our breakfast in peace.
(Breakfast and the first meal back home after an evening flight. Now that’s something worth waiting for and dreaming about.)
First, something to quench our morning thirst. Teh tarik or hand pulled tea is the default beverage order.
We never bother asking for kurang manis anymore because the servers inevitably ignore this. (Or perhaps the agreed upon standard for "less sweet” involves more spoonfuls of sugar and sweetened evaporated milk than we remember. Nostalgia can be a double-edged sword.)
Soon our aluminium platters of roti pisang arrive and it’s time to dig in!
Some places reheat their roti canai so there is always a risk you end up with a flabby if lukewarm piece of dough. Sure, one could ask for "extra garing” but again, just like the exhortation of kurang manis, it’s anyone’s guess if this request will be honoured.
Homecoming, you could say, comes with its fair share of disappointments. Time and distance tend to coat our memories with an idealised sheen.
Reality can be harsher but perhaps this is a useful lesson. Rather than remain in denial, we learn to appreciate "loving what is”, as author Byron Katie put it.
This is why we tend to go for roti pisang; this has to be cooked to order and as mentioned earlier, the layer of granulated sugar guarantees a crackling crust. (Yes, you can love "what is” but you can also learn to stack the cards in your favour.)
Whichever you order, there is never a dhal moment with your roti of choice (if you’d pardon the pun) as every platter comes with the requisite trio of gravies or condiments: dark and fiery sambal; the oily vermilion of curry, and the mild, nutritious dhal, humble yet golden-hued all the same.
Comforting and familiar, as every homecoming ought to be.
Still hungry? Those with larger appetites can peruse the counter display for an array of deep fried proteins as add-ons for a more substantial meal. Fish, chicken, squid.
But we never need more than our simple roti. Not even the fancier sort — those towering cones of roti tisu that seem more a spectacle than anything truly satiating.
If we really wanted another bite or two, we would rather have something equally familiar and basic. The classic roti kosong — a plain roti canai.
Light. Fortifying. Sedap.
So what if this selection isn’t cooked to order? So what if it is lukewarm and not flaky, far from the "extra garing” of our imagination?
It’s what we eat when we come home. And no place tastes like home.
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