What Will Be Your Last Meal?

We have to make some choices at every step of life. Some are easy, some are too tough to make, but in the end, we have to make them. In some cases we got the time to think about the options, we have the resources to analyse them for the pros and cons. We also can take help from many management theories available for decision making. But in some other cases, we are running against time, we have a close deadline to make our choice. Here, no matter the consequences we have to take the decision in the stipulated time frame and that’s what makes such decisions more difficult than the others. In my case, one of such difficult choices that I have to make every day is, “what I’m going to eat in my next meal?”

You might think I am joking but no, this is one of the most difficult choices I have to make. Consider my situation, I’m sitting at my desk, looking at my computer, trying to work among checking my notifications from Facebook, Twitter and Instagram and suddenly, here comes lunch time. I am not yet prepared for it and I have so little time to lock my computer, lock the desk, move out, find a place to eat and most importantly decide what to eat. Yes, yes, I can go beyond lunch time and nobody is going to ask me about it but how long can I avoid making his decision before my body starts eating my own flesh to survive. At that moment I know that this is soon going to be a question of life and death and I don’t have the time to analyse my options scientifically and come to a decision using decision theory, game theory or any other rational approach. It all comes down to my gut feeling (or gut filling), literally.

Even if you are one of those sit at home keyboard warrior, you would still have similar if not more difficulty in making this decision. See, even seating at home you have so many options to order your food from. Swiggy, Zomato, Foodpanda or many other local restaurants that can provide home delivery. At first, you have to choose among the delivery service providers. You might have used their service in the past and may have an idea about their service quality, but most probably you have had mixed experience from all of them. The quality of their service largely dependent on their foot soldiers, the delivery boys, and these people keep changing. You can’t be sure that you will be served by the same delivery person who served you yesterday even if you choose the same service provider. Now you get tired after some time and choose a service provider randomly. But your problems don’t end here, each food delivery option has tied up with around a hundred restaurants in your area. And now your real problem begins.

You know most of the restaurants shown in these apps by name, you might have seen some of these on your monthly trip to D-Mart to buy Maggie and coke, but you being a couch potato have hardly (read never) set a foot inside any of these restaurants. So you don’t know their staff, cook or hygiene. You just see their colour enhanced digital menu card with photoshopped food photos which they probably downloaded from the internet. Every restaurant has a signature taste that reflects in their every dish, that means if you had tasted one dish you can imagine roughly how the other one might taste. But in your case, you don’t know this either, cause you don’t remember from which restaurant you ordered yesterday, let alone the idea of remembering their taste. Again you are in the unknown waters so you make an uneducated guess that one of the top three restaurants might be good for me, and you choose it, ignorantly, like your life doesn’t depend on it.

You have chosen the restaurant now it’s time to look at the menu. Menu card, a small book with many pictures and a list of varied delicacies. You don’t understand most of the items from the list and you can’t stand some other. But no matter how long the list is, most of the times you won’t find anything that might tickle your taste buds at that particular time. After combing through the list 2-3 times, you suddenly miss good old college days where you didn’t have any choice, you had to eat whatever is served.

It was too much fun going all Ramsey Gordon on each item on the plate and still eating it at the end. Life was so simple back then. Flash forward to our current situation, we are running out of time, we have to decide soon before we turn into a flesh eating cannibal. So again, we reach a situation where we decide randomly without giving much thought. So sad, right?

Many times we see different restaurants, different delicacies and we wish to try those but for some reason, we postpone it for some other day. For some dishes that other day becomes a reality and many other things remain a mystery for us throughout our life. We miss out on many things, sometimes due to our prejudices about the taste of it, we don’t choose it and sometimes due to unavailability or at times tablemates unwilling to taste new food. We don’t give much thought to it, cause for the reasons unknown we think that we have another day to live thus we can have it any time in the future. 

What if you don’t have another day? What if you are on death row and asked about what you would have as your last meal? Along with your other memories, all the menu cards and plates full of food that you’ve seen in the lifetime will come flooding back. Among thousands of things you missed out on, about the same number of things you ate, what will you choose? For many reasons, this will be a much more difficult decision than anything you can think of right now. First reason being, now your options are not limited to restaurants in your area, so the available options are risen multifold making the decision much more difficult. This meal is going to accompany you to your grave unless you crap it out while dying. You can’t choose a new thing as you might not want to be disappointed if the dish isn’t as per your liking. Everyone has had many favourites in the lifetime and it’s difficult to choose one. You are not even sure that you want to choose among your favourite things or go for the worst thing you know so that you don’t regret dying much. Huh… I am not sure where I am going with all this now. Just don’t be afraid to try new things, at least there will be one less difficulty in choosing your last meal. Keep eating, you need it to stay alive.

And yes, tell me what would you like to have in your last meal?

Disclaimer: Don’t get offended, even if I used “you” in the sentences above I was referring myself, most of the times. (not in the last question, the last question is for you.)