mother Food

                                                  

There is a small hotel in Puthur, Palakkad, named ‘MOTHER FOOD”.    I went into the hotel, asked for a tea, and casually asked the owner what Mother Food really meant. I gently informed him that the word ‘Mother Food’ does not convey any truthful meaning in English!   The hotel owner looked at me for a few moments and said that he wanted to say

‘അമ്മയുടെ പാചകംപോലെ'that could be translated into English as  ‘As good as the food cooked by one’s mother'. As such a lengthy sentence cannot be given as a name for his hotel, he chose the words ‘Mother’ and ‘Food’  in the sentence and coined the Malayalam and English hybrid phrase “Mother Food”!

The meaning of the Malayalam phrase ‘അമ്മയുടെ പാചകംപോലെ' is partly conveyable in English, but to know what ‘Mother Food’ really means, you need to learn Malayalam.