Nighttime Nibbles

Five years ago.  

A glow of blue light emerges through a comforter in a bedroom that is otherwise dark.  

"Switch off that damn phone, I can't sleep...", grumbles Pavana.  She is hanging onto the edge of the mattress on her side of the bed.  Separating her from me is a tiny two-year-old laying spread-eagle, defying the laws of geometry by occupying 75% of the bed area.

"I can't sleep either...", I mutter.

"Exactly, it's that damn phone... switch it off... now!", she responds in a loud whisper.

"I think I am hungry."

"No, you are not.  Go to sleep."

"I'm going downstairs."

"Lalit, switch off that phone and sleep."

"You coming with me?  I'll make us papdi chaat."

Five minutes later, we find ourselves plopped down on the couch, watching late night comedy and chowing down layers of papdi, onions, dahi, and chutney, while the tiny two-year-old somehow manages to occupy an additional 10% area on the bed upstairs.

Cortisol has a rummy tendency to surface past bedtime.  And once cortisol spikes, the mind loses its restraint relative to dietary discretions.  Hallucinations of food items that are the antithesis of fruits, veggies, or whole grains manifest.  The immediate course of action in such a situation is to head straight for the snack pantry.  One knows this is imprudent, almost reckless behavior, and yet one cannot evade this cortisol bait.  What ensues then is the unlawful presence of humans in the kitchen and living room at ungodly hours, and newly dirtied dishes in the sink upon conclusion of the misdemeanor.

Like I said, these midnight snacks are seldom healthy choices.  Our choices have almost always belonged to the chaat family, ranging from simple concoctions like mixture + curd to more elaborate preparations like sev batata dahi puri.  On occasion though, we have fired up the stove to griddle up a couple of buttery frozen maida parathas, also known as 'junk paratha' in our family parlance, to be eaten with oily thokku.  Our midnight snacking desires have become a bit subdued now compared to five years ago, but we still fall prey to the cortisol bait occasionally.  While Pavana does not have the opportunity to admonish me for nighttime smartphone usage due to our current avant-garde (and hopefully temporary) sleeping arrangement of occupying separate bedrooms with one kid each in custody (necessitated by our baby's jumpy sleeping habits, the knack both kids have of being able to occupy more surface area of the bed than their bodies geometrically permit, and the impact all this has on all our sleep patterns), our thoughts continue to be pretty aligned w.r.t. midnight cravings.  Snacking heist operations are periodically carried out when such cravings hit, provided that the little one is not sitting up randomly saying "Apple" or restlessly circumvolving in the area assigned to her for sleeping.  For instance, sample the below text conversation that transpired last night -