In my life, joy always arrives on a plate. The celebrations are accompanied with barfi. Announcements are made over the family table laden with our favorite meals. Even the grievous moments are served with a cup of tea. When the weather turns, our kitchens turn with it, the scent of wet earth outside and the smell of pakoras inside. Every momentous moment is marked by a food, cherished by everyone.

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The biryani in my hostel is so beloved; it vanishes even before we reach our turns. But for me it has always been an imitation, something of a mirage. Nothing could beat my mother’s Friday biryani. Her biryani is the closest thing to permanence I know. Home is synonymous with meals I’ve had my whole life. It is not a set of walls. It is a plate of biryani served with raita on Friday afternoons after the prayer.

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I have often discovered that sharing food often leads to a particular ease. As kids, sharing lunch meant we were friends. As adults sharing our griefs meant we were strangers. There is a curious feeling that makes us want to indulge strangers with our plights, confide them in our troubles. Strangers who we are never going to meet again -people you meet in parking spots, on the internet, on the local bus back home. Sharing biryani is never a conscious choice. Unless you are a mother. Then you share everything. For your children. With your children. The biryani recipe my mother uses is a vague concept. She knows everything, all at once. I know nothing. Without a precise step by step recipe, I am lost. Whether its biryani or life.

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Ingredients:

3 onions: thinly sliced – each layer for a different home you believed in.

One bowl of rice – washed till the water runs clear, unlike the memory stained with loss.

Salt – to taste. To linger in your mouth even after you leave.

Chicken – marinated overnight to let it absorb as much as it can

Mint & coriander – handful, plucked fresh from the DIY pots that never stayed in the same balcony for long

A dented but loyal pressure cooker that has followed you through every move.

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Recipe:

Begin with memory. Add the thinly sliced onions into the cooker with some oil and fry them until they are golden brown. Wait till your heart feels as stricken as the onions. Remembrance is the key element here. Without it, nostalgia cannot season the end. Remember your first home. The idea of forever used to be so far away. The childhood home occupies a niche nook in your heart. Even if you are never going back to it again. The outline of that house is so vivid, that you can hear it, the whistle of the pressure cooker, the clashing doors in stormy weathers. The perception of home shatters when you realize that even homes can be temporary. By the time the onions are done, you will remember how the first house you moved into smelled not of garlic and turmeric but of paint and wood polish. It was a house that yearned to be home. Or so you thought.

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Add the meat. Wait till it cooks perfectly. Tender as the day you accepted the irony of fate. Those who long most for a home are often denied it. The concept of manifesting seems relatively new but I feel the sentiment has been lingering forever. I have manifested a home since the moment I learned what our address was. Perhaps memory exists so that I could find my way back home. Maybe manifesting is simply a theatrical concept curated by the people who have gotten everything that they wished for. As the chicken simmers, you add the essential masala and the kitchen slowly blossoms in the fragrance of cardamom and cinnamon. You try to incorporate the same flavor and smell you always craved. But the original taste never shows. You do the same with your home. You try leaving traces of you everywhere. A dream catcher in the window. A hand painting on the wall. The sticker on your vanity. An imprint of your soul into the place you now have to claim as your home. You don’t learn it then but your dreams remain in those homes forever.

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Add the boiled rice in the chicken broth. This step requires patience. Patience that the rice won’t spill over. Patience that everything will eventually be figured out. The thing is patience has such a delicate balance with hope that if it tips on either side, it will submerge in the waters of despair. Just when you settle down with hope and patience, you are informed that this temporary home needs to be evacuated and a new home awaits you at the shore of despair. We were like birds that summer. Our houses changed facades too quickly to be turned into nests. Migration led us into another house, a smaller one, where the weather penetrated the rooms and the evenings could be felt behind our eyes. We left the dream catcher, the paintings there. The vanity came with us. I remember my obsession with green tea that summer. When I made tea for my parents, I brewed a cup of green tea specifically for myself. Or was that the other way around? The slate never stayed clean long enough to be certain.

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When the rice has gained the vermillion hue, its signature biryani color, you have to mix it with a large wooden spoon. It is better if the spoon is as battered by fate as you are. This part is hard. Everything that has cooked separately must come together at last. It is almost as if all the personas of you, you have created are now summed up inside of you. You cannot always be 11 and lonely, but somehow you are always 11 and lonely. As the rice turn around and you view them from all angles, you should be reminded of all the homes you eventually had to leave.​ Memories got scattered around in places, you won’t ever visit. Acquaintances turn into unlikely faltering friendships and back to strangers again. Losing people to talk to and containing everything inside like the pressure cooker that will burst if not opened on time.

 

Finally, the biryani is ready. You can tell by the strong flavorful smell that now hangs in your kitchen. It clings to you. Now you have to sit and wait for everyone. The taste won’t be the same if you don’t eat it with the right people. The final step resembles the final home, the one with the porch light meant to stay on for you. The one with colorful plant pots scattered everywhere. The one you left by your own choice. The one who will be there for you always but you won’t be there for it.

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Serve the plate with a dash of home sickness for a place that never existed in the first place. Best eaten on a Friday afternoon, with people who will not stay forever but make you feel at home. Perhaps that’s what the recipe is: the only home I’ve been able to keep.