While grocery shopping the other day ,I picked a jar of mango pickle at the local Indian grocery store. At lunch that day I happened to try a piece.Taste buds can spin their own magic, cause as soon as I had placed the first piece in my mouth, a million memories flooded my mind...

A lazy Sunday afternoon at my home back in India.It is lunch time and my mother has asked me to fetch some home made pickle from the large poreclain jar we store under the stair case.I find the jar,it is white with a brown base.The lid is brown and is covered with piece of cloth,held in place with a cord. It has been in the house ever since I remember.I untie the cord and remember to use a dry spoon to remove some pickle that is safe under a layer of oil.Just looking at it my mouth waters. Before the pickle reaches the kitchen, I quickly pop a piece into my mouth...That taste,will always be special. Home made pickle,made painstakinly each spring by my Mom. She would carefully shop for raw mangoes and pay the vendor extra to have them cut into the right shape. Without measuring spoons and recipe books my Mom,would manage to make pickle that tasted just like the previous years batch. Summers brought with them opportunity for more home made delicacies.Papad,potato wafers ,dried stuffed chillies.

As the years pass, packaged and ready made pickles have made their way to more and more kitchens, mine included.Unfortunately I never learnt to make them...I might never be able to pass this knowledge, this tradition to the next generation.I do not knit, sew, embroider, things that kept my mom busy on many an afternoon.

As malls jostle for space, and as the market is ready to serve you with all you need as long you are ready to shell out a few bucks, I wonder if these arts are dying out with our generation.. Will our kids have fewer "home made" things than we did.Wouldn't it be sad that their taste buds would remind them of a store and not home...