It was a two week burst of sunshine, beautiful sunshine, the radiance of the ultimate energy source bursting the monotonous pastel of the gray clouds, gray buildings, and gray sweaters, with abundant speckles of white, blue, cyan, yellow, green and crimson, that prompted the rise of the ‘Imp of the Perverse’ (my first experience of reading Edgar Allan Poe) in me. It was the onset of the spring and my advisor Tomas, being the natural Scandinavian that he is, was all bright eyes and floral to go out and explore the otherwise dark alleys around the university for satisfying our culinary desires. For two weeks, we both set on every noon, looking with the eyes of a seeker and a heart of an adventurer and found rich Lebanese, Italian, Pakistani, Iraqi palates. We ogled at the Kebabs, the durums, the shawarmas, the pizzas, the fried chickens and gave a serious exercise for the linings of our large intestines.
The reflection on what I had done to myself, my bank account and the large intestine, became clear when I had to request Tomas to push the early morning meetings to 10 due to “eccentric behavior of the large intestine and the recto-anal muscles”. Also the fact that I have an impending Big Fat Indian marriage steeled up my mind to stop seeking these gastronomical prostitutes and made up my mind to tell Tomas that “You are alone on this buddy. Sorry to hang you dry like this.” But as the Danish weather tried to go back to its usual bleakness, Tomas himself dropped out and saved me from betrayal and backstabbing.
It was then I started to realize the growing Imp of Perverse in me. What was just a zygote of want, it soon, as the ivy of the poison, started to envelop me; its sinews growing strong around my legs, my hands and my head. And they all seem to grow out of the nerve tissue connecting my tongue and my brain. Especially that part of my tongue which had tasted the Arabic Pizza and that part of the brain which recognized the juiciness of the shwarma meat melting in the cheese with jalapenos on a freshly baked base. As Edgar, with the noose around his neck, realized how the Imp of Perverse has pushed him to passionately and proudly confess of a long forgotten murder that he so perfectly executed, I realized yesterday night that the Imp of Pizzarse had pushed me in this dark alley.
It was 11 in the night and I could read the sign “Pizza Palace – Durum, Pizza and Indisk” in the light of the dusk. But unlike Edgars Imp, my imp had to lose this time – the Pizzeria was closed. A wave of relief hit me and later as I tasted the first spoonful of the Dal khicdi that I cooked up in haste, I had found, albiet momentarily the antidote to the Imp of Pizzarse.
KøbenhåvnKahania 