this is how the holiday goes: you arrive, and the three weeks are spread out before you, full of promise and possibilities. your life slows down, a little. an early morning trip to the wet market with your mother, a meal at a little pink cafe… this could be your everyday life. and then suddenly you’re three days away from the plane trip out, and there won’t be a return visit to the little pink cafe, and — even worse! — you have not had a single dosai, nor a bowl of meepok, and the opportunities to slot these meals in are diminishing fast.

[ takes a deep breath. ]

so this morning — noon, really — even though we had scheduled leftover popiah at home for lunch, we called halftime from our mustafa excursion and froggered across the street to a shiny indian vegetarian cafeteria, gleaming with anticipation.

a dosai makes any day a good day; a rava dosai is even better, crunchy with semolina, and embedded with a festive mix of sliced green chilli, mustard seeds, minced onion, ginger and whatever else the house mix might be. a ghee rava dosai is a magnificent and superior being, surrounded in a golden halo that comes from being fried in clarified butter.

one ghee rava dosai and a cup of syrupy masala chai later, i laid my head on my mother’s shoulder. oh! such contentment. we would have come to little india sooner, but my mother had been gravely concerned about the chikugunya-riddled mosquitoes that had colonised the area recently. fresh out of the car, she brandished a tube of mosquito repellant at us. but we live on the edge, dammit! look at us, choosing bindis with not a care in the world, trying on amusing shoes in the basement.

so today, we snuck in two lunches. but here’s what i snuck in last week.

on our first morning in port dickson, a roti bom. breakfast of champions: an extra buttery paratha, sprinkled in sugar. it came with a puddle of dhal and a slurp of fish curry gravy. unwrinkle you nose; the tangy, peppery curry is a most suitable companion for the crunchy, sweet bread. the kid drank half my teh tarik and then ate enough of the roti that i felt i needed to order another. i didn’t right then, but i couldn’t wait until the next day so that i could have it again.

as it turned out, i did not, because a murtabak presented itself, stuffed with dry chicken curry, with extra chicken curry gravy for sloshing around in. it was big enough to feed five, i believe, but i ate it all. the kid did not eat any of it, naturally, or any of her sardine murtabak (which i’d persuaded upon her in the guise of something a cat might enjoy), but she did drain most of my beaker of teh ais.

T minus three days and counting, i’ve finally learnt my lesson. my masala chai today was all mine, because the kid had her own golden column: mango lassi, which she drank in a single slurp. and then we did get home — late — for popiah. i had the best intentions to wrap modest little rolls, but they took on a life of their own. you start spartan, with a lettuce leaf, but then the turnip-carrot-tofu-beans, and the sprouts, the shredded cucumber, fat baby sauce, minced garlic, crushed peanuts, sprigs of coriander, fried shallots, crabmeat, prawns, an extra drizzle of sauce… and you are sunk.