Meals and Feels

This week I'm out of town for work, and as a result my daily schedule has been a bit different than when I'm at home. After finishing work each day and returning to the hotel, I've been taking a few minutes to chill/decompress, work out in the fitness center, and finally go somewhere for dinner. Today during my chill/decompress phase, I decided that I wanted BBQ for dinner. Knowing that the restaurant closes early (8pm), I quickly went to the fitness center and showered so that I could feel both clean and also justified in consuming an unhealthy amount of food.

After getting ready to go, I called a lyft to go to the restaurant. I was feeling pretty hype about eating BBQ, and the driver, who also liked the restaurant, added to my level of hype. It was a short drive, with moderately scenic views outside and a Drake song playing in the background. I was truly looking forward to this meal.

As we pulled closer to the restaurant, I noticed that the lights in the building were off. "Bruh I think this restaurant is closed!", exclaimed the driver. I was so disappointed, and I accepted that I would just have to eat at a different restaurant in the same block. There were a number of nearby restaurants, but sadly none of them seemed to satisfy that craving that I had for BBQ.

I ended up narrowing it down to two choices: pizza or Indian food. I wasn't really craving either of them at the time, and looking at the menus I didn't find anything that sounded appealing to me. Since I had to make a choice, I ended up just going to the Indian restaurant.

The minute I walked in the door, my mood changed. There was a board against the wall which listed daily specials (which weren't on the online menu), and right in the middle there was an entry for haleem. That was the minute I knew I was in the right place. For some reason, I had been craving haleem for several months, so I sat down and ordered the haleem (and some chicken 65 because I had already justified eating an unhealthy amount of food but that's besides the point).

They brought the haleem to my table pretty soon after I ordered and it looked like a quality haleem. It was topped with some fried onions (for that yum factor), a slice of lime (shoutout to my guy Emil), and half a boiled egg (odd flex but ok). I scooped a little bit of the haleem in my spoon and took the first byte.

Have you ever experienced a "meel" (meal) where the first byte makes you say "ah"? Let me just tell you that "meel, ah" backwards spells "haleem", and let me also tell you that this first byte was both hot and HOT! It 100% satisfied my haleem cravings from the past few months.

Some of you may have heard me say "sometimes you don't think it'll be okay, but it'll be okay", but even though today I thought things weren't going to be okay because I couldn't eat BBQ, my expectations were exceeded (to the point where I completely forgot that I was craving BBQ in the first place!). The haleem was Nikhil-certified delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed every byte.

On a maybe more serious note, sometimes going out of town for work gets boring and/or lonely, but what keeps me going is knowing that I have people who care about me and a Jesus who loves me. As crazy as it sounds, eating this delicious haleem tonight in the middle of this boring work trip was, in my view, a way of Jesus showing me that He cares for me as an individual. He knows both my need for salvation and relationships and also my desire for haleem.

After finishing my food, I waited outside for my lyft and continued to think about how that haleem had made my day. Perhaps, I thought, God had a plan in me not having BBQ today so that my haleem craving would be satisfied instead. I thought back to my chill/decompress phase when I was craving BBQ. I thought back to when I was in the original lyft with the driver who hyped up the restaurant. Finally, I thought back to that Drake song that was playing in the car, and that's when it hit me: the song that was playing was none other than "God's Plan" 🙏🏾