When we were first married, one of the things I noticed was my wife penchant for buy large volumes of rice. It’s not that I don’t like rice; I enjoy it. However, I was more accustom to a 1/2 kg bag or may be 1 kg. My wife brought home 8 kg bags. I had never seen a rice bag so big.
I couldn’t imagine eating all that rice before it went bad. As I was growing up, I was regularly reminded to eat everything on my plate because there were starving children elsewhere in the world, so we shouldn’t waste food. So, with that context, I was worried about waste.
I asked her why we needed so much rice. Her first response was that her mother usually had several bags, and for us to have just one was really not such a big thing. After a while the story slowly emerged.
My mother-in-law had been in Hong Kong during the War. They had suffered greatly under the Japanese occupation (to such an extent that she was upset when we bought a Japanese car). Food was regularly an issue; frequently they had only rice, and usually not enough. As a result, she hoarded rice as best she could. This readiness to store quantities of rice carried on through her daughter, my wife.
This readiness has also materialized in another form; buying large quantities of food from Costco. Seemingly logical — but deflective — rationale is offered, but I think it really has to do with the rice.
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