Hunger

Everybody has felt hunger in their lives.
Well, I’d like to think everybody has.
Because if there is a creature on Earth which has not experienced hunger I wouldn’t know what I would actually feel for it:
- I would feel extremely jealous at the amount the creature must be eating to not have ever felt hungry.
- I would feel sorry because the creature does not know the mix of blissful emotion that well up in the mind, body and soul when food enters an empty stomach.

Hungry – it is a normal word.
Hungry – does not remind me of anything in particular.
I am always either hungry or sleepy or not keeping well – Always.
Life is simple that way.

Now I am going to try and describe hunger as I feel it for:
- All those who have forgotten the feeling (you are growing old!)
- All those who feel it with me (let us celebrate this feeling)
- All those who have never felt it (get a life!!)
Feel what I feel. This is something nobody should miss out on – Ever.

Hunger can be of two types:

1) The ‘real’ hunger:

Those who have felt this will never ever forget it.
It starts with a feeling of a tiny bubble bursting inside your stomach – plop!
You ignore it.
It goes on to a super car – vroom vroom!
You try and ignore it.
It becomes an ache and every part of your body craves for food.
You cannot ignore it.
Your stomach starts screaming and all you can hear are blood curdling screams.
You start thinking with your stomach.
You try to put your despair at bay by
- Sleeping, but all you can dream about is food.
- Reading, but every word you read looks the same – FOOD FOOD FOOD.
- Watching television, every channel seems to have something about food in it – cooking food, looking at food, showing off food, eating food etc.

2) The ‘imaginary’ hunger:

This affects mainly people like me – the foodies (I prefer this word to glutton)
This starts with a stimulus.
The stimulus usually leads to salivation. The salivation can be due to
- a picture which makes food look so delicious
- or it can be a particular memory of a particular taste
- or it can be the heavenly sound of something frying
- or it can be the smell of something that is cooking in the neighbour’s kitchen
- or sometimes it can simply be excessive saliva with no reasonable reason.
Well, whatever the reason, you feel hungry.
You feel hungry even though you are not hungry.
You feel hungry even when your stomach is not so empty.
You feel so hungry you reach a point of craving when you will do anything, absolutely anything to get that piece of memory back alive and chewing.

The two types of hunger, however, are very similar in their result.

You eat.
The first morsel that is chewed – is chewed slowly – savouring every sensation of taste known and then swallowed.
You reach Heaven.
Food melting in your mouth, feeling it all the way down to your stomach
– Heaven.
You don’t realize when, where, how or why.
You just keep savouring and swallowing and the smile on your face keeps growing (along with your belly) until you are done.
And then it becomes a memory.
It becomes a memory of food that is a potential hunger inducer.

That is the beauty of hunger.
That is the beauty of food.
Are you hungry?
I am starving!