In search of set dosas

Here is an old article (more than a year-old) of mine that was published in the Deccan Herald as a middle.

It is well known how most women
crave for particular foods during
pregnancy. I too went through
immense dislike towards certain
foods and a desperate craving for
some foods (I hardly thought about
before) during my pregnancy. Set
dosas with coconut chutney and luscious
fruit salad had me in completely.
I imagined savoring morsels
of a spongy set dosa and tucking
into spoonfuls of delectable fruits
smothered with ice cream that
would taste exactly the way I wanted
it to.
I spent those nine months in
quest of this perfect meal. I tried set
dosas at almost every eatery in
town, but they just didn’t tingle my
taste buds the way I wanted them to.
And no hotel’s fruit salad made me
sigh with contention so I could stop
with my search.
Chewy dosas, the-too-thick ones,
the ones with a rancid taste, and
some that had a yucky yeasty flavor
— I discovered what a set dosa must
not taste like at all. The chutneys
spoke another tale: too watery, too
timid for the tongue, and shame-tocall-
it-a-chutney types were what I
encountered at most places. I finally
found my perfect fruit salad in a popular
dessert hangout in town and ordered
it almost everyday till I started
resembling a full-ripe pear myself.
But, no such luck with my
dosas, not yet.
Time ticked away and it was two
weeks for my delivery date. I could
no longer move about as freely with
my large belly, but I was determined
to savour merawallah dosa before
my baby came out. I decided to cook
them myself and turned to the website
for the perfect recipe and stumbled
upon a hundred variants. After
much research and running recipes
in my mind, I zeroed-in on the one
recipe I knew would yield me desired
results. I was thrilled. I prepared
the batter myself and checked
and re-checked the consistency. Satisfied,
I set it to ferment on the
kitchen counter and retired to bed. I
was just eight hours away from indulging
my cravings.
But by midnight, my baby decided
it was pointless to wait, and I was
rushed to the hospital for delivery. I
woke up from anesthetic slumber to
discover I had a baby boy and overheard
my mother and sister-in-law
discussing their enjoyable breakfast
that morning.
Sometimes, it's impossible
to wait for the favourite
food to taste perfect.