Beef Curry

8 - year old Bob looked sternly towards his father Brian. His father was bringing the 'Beef Curry' for dinner from the kitchen.
Bob asked thumping his fists over the table, "Why do you make Beef Curry every week?"
Brian smiled as he placed the Curry in the dining table and said, "You know the answer"
Bob replied, "B'coz you like it.. ."
Brian started serving the Curry. Bob asked, "Dad! Why you like it?"
Brian said, "We mostly like a particular color.. a particular food b'coz we have an emotional attachment to it"
Bob looked at Brian attentively.
Brian said, "During my childhood my family was never well off financially"
Bob nodded. Brian continued, "When I was your age, I was usually alone in the apartment, Mom usually worked extra time so that we would have at least one proper meal a day. There were endless nights when I couldn’t sleep out of sheer hunger, so I learned to drink several glasses of tap water in an effort to fool my stomach into thinking it was full just so I could get a couple hours of sleep. There were endless days when I was so hungry that I couldn’t concentrate in school, envying my friends and classmates, wishing with all my heart and soul that I could trade lives with them just for one day to see how life would be like in their shoes.
"But 1 day things became worse, it got so bad that there wasn’t anything to eat over the weekend except some potatoes with spuds growing out of them. Food was minimal during the week. I lied on the floor, crying my eyes out, my tears soaking through the carpet and shouted out loud the words - 'I’m so hungry!', hoping that by some miracle, God would hear my cries of hunger and provide me with food to nourish my weak body like he did with manna for the Israelites. When nothing manifested, I cried even harder onto the carpet.
"Several minutes later, I heard a knock on my door. I obviously didn’t want to answer it, but the person kept on knocking and wouldn’t go away. I opened the door just a crack to see who it was. It was my friend John. He lived one floor beneath me.
"He invited me to his apartment for no apparent reason. I didn’t really have anything else going for me, but I didn’t want him to see that I was crying, so after some failed attempts to dissuade him in order to buy some time while I wiped the tears off my face, I accepted his out of the blue invitation and followed him. It was strange because I was pretty sure he knew something was wrong with me, and he would usually ask what was wrong, but he didn’t this time. No words were spoken between us as we climbed down the stairs to his apartment. I followed him one floor down to his apartment and when I went inside, a delicious aroma in the air pierced my stomach like a sharp spear."
Bob said, "It was the smell of curry!!"
Brian smiled, "Yes! There on the dinner table, was a steaming plate of curry on white rice, with chunks of beef, potatoes, carrots, onions, and peas embedded in it. John’s mother gestured to me to sit down and to eat. She poured a can of grape soda into a yellow plastic cup and placed it beside the plate. I couldn’t help myself. I started wolfing down the curry as if I were in a speed eating competition. I couldn’t get enough of it. The plate emptied quickly and she was quick to refill it and I wolfed it down once more despite the burning sensation of hot food in my mouth."
Brian looked at Bob and said, "Words cannot describe how great that curry and grape soda tasted that day and words cannot express the enormous gratitude I had for John and his mother at that moment in time."
Bob asked, "Dad! Did God answer your prayers? Or did John and his mom simply hear your cries of hunger through their ceiling of the apartment"
Brian thought for a moment and said, "I think it was a little bit of both... And to this day, this experience is the sole reason why I absolutely love Beef Curry so much. I absolutely love it. I can’t get enough of it. I associate this Curry with hope in the darkest of hours; of human kindness and goodness."