“Idly” can refer to either the adverb “idly”, meaning without purpose, or to the South Indian steamed rice cake, a popular breakfast food. ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

I grew up in a middle-class Indian household. Food was never something to complain about. We were taught to be grateful—whatever’s on your plate, you eat it.

Most Indian food made perfect sense to me as a kid. There was always something happening in it—spices, layers, aroma, complexity. Each dish felt alive.

Except one.

Idly.

I could never understand idly. It was soft, bland, flavourless. No masala, no real character of its own. And yet, everyone around me loved it. They’d say, “It’s healthy!” or “It goes with anything!” But my young mind couldn’t grasp it. If we had the freedom to cook and eat anything—why make this?

Why put so much effort into making something that tasted like nothing?

That was my first moment of protest.
I didn’t have the words back then—but deep inside, I was rebelling against the absurd.

Idly felt meaningless.

But then I started noticing things.

I’d hear on the news—farmers struggling, losing crops to floods or droughts, some even taking their lives over unpaid loans. My dad would react, shake his head, and call it tragic. It was the kind of tragedy that quietly enters Indian homes through a television screen while someone stirs tea in the kitchen. Their pain, their labour, the weight of their survival—all of it packed invisibly into something I’d dismissed as flavourless.

Then there was my mother.
She never forgot to soak the grains the night before. She’d wake up early, grind them to just the right consistency, leave the batter to ferment, then rise again at dawn to steam it—all so I had something to eat.

I sat with that. I let it hit me.

The idly may still be tasteless. But how dare I call the effort behind it meaningless?

Because meaning wasn’t in the taste.
It was in the work.
In the struggle.
In the choice to make it meaningful—by adding chutney, sambar, or whatever little joy we can find.

And that’s how I started to see life, too.

Life might be like the idly. On its own, it can feel empty, repetitive, even pointless. But we don’t live it plain. We add things—sambar, chutney, love, laughter, stories, pain, resistance. We make it worth something.

And yeah, you can throw it away and walk off.
But then you’re not fighting anymore.

And if you eat it plain every day without ever questioning—maybe you’re just pushing the boulder, carelessly, without thought.

But if you sit down, see its flavourlessness, and still choose to add something to it—maybe that’s your defiance.

That’s my defiance.
Idly is meaningless.
But I choose to find the sambar.
I choose to find meaning.