How khichdi and papad brought our family together
It was 7.30am on a normal Tuesday in January 2017. My husband, Sameer, was working on his laptop while sipping coffee. Our two young sons were getting ready for school. I was making breakfast. An hour later we were in a hospital emergency room, and a neurosurgeon was telling me to “call my family” as my husband, up until then completely healthy, had just suffered a massive stroke. What followed was nothing short of a nightmare — a month in a coma and two brain surgeries.
As I waited night and day in the ICU with my husband, I felt helpless in so many ways. I was a bystander, a part of the peanut gallery. I couldn’t do much. As much as I tried to stay on top of the medical situation, it dawned on me that I couldn’t do the one thing that I had done since the day I met him: I couldn’t nourish him with food. As a person whose life is writing about food and how it connects and nourishes us, suddenly this other crisis entered my heart. Sameer and I met 25 years ago, in college, over a bowl of kheer that I was cooking in my lonely dormitory room. It was the smell of the elaichi in the kheer, he told me later, that had drawn him to the room to see who was making Indian food on this remote American campus. When I gave up my engineering career to become a food writer, my husband was my number one supporter.
Friends gathered around us in the hospital within moments of learning the devastating news. A meal train was set up — neighbours bringing food to our home to make sure the kids were taken care of. My sister arrived from another state and made sure my boys were nourished during this devastating period. Since we live overseas, we are a tight-knit family and she stepped in to ensure the children were cared for.
My husband had so many tubes going in and out of his body that I lost count. I could see he was getting his medication, but repeatedly asked the nurse to make sure that he was being fed and hydrated. They assured me that he was. Yet, as I would look at him lying in bed, I could feel a heaviness in my chest. I doubt that bringing him dal or roti at this point would have made any difference, as he was on life support. And yet, I kept wondering if there was any way I could feed him. I found myself eating increasingly less and mourning much more.
After he was released from the hospital, his health was very poor and I became his sole caregiver, which left me little time to cook. The food train continued for months on end; we had breakfast, lunch, dinner coming in from all our friends and neighbours. To say the house was blessed with caring friends would be an understatement. However, the stress was palpable — the kids were beyond worried and I was beyond exhausted.
Eventually Sameer started to eat a little: Soft fruits, rice, a bit of pasta. All gentle comfort foods that friends were bringing over. I still wasn’t able to cook or feed my family as I would have liked to, but I found myself, late at night, reaching for the cookbooks on my nightstand. Just going through them comforted me, provided solace, and made me think of happier times. I began to bookmark recipes I would cook when things settled down. They gave me hope. That things would settle down.
About four months into his treatment, I finally found the strength to venture into my kitchen. As I stared at the stove, I felt my hands shaking and my entire body tense up as I broke into wails of tears. Finally, unable to decide what to cook, I settled on frying some papad. That seemed mindless enough and easy enough to take on.
No sooner than the smell of the frying papad filled the air, I heard my 10-year-old shout, “Bhai, mom is cooking!” His older brother, 17, came running. “Mom! You are cooking! Oh, I know what to get, I will be right back.” It took me a second to realise that he had rushed to the store. There was usually only one occasion when I made papad.
My son returned home within what seemed like minutes, with three things in his shopping bag: Ghee, mango pickle, and dahi. “As you always say, khichdi has four friends — papad, ghee, achaar, and dahi. You made khichdi, right, mom? We are going to eat your cooking now? Right, mom?” I did indeed prepare khichdi, and even managed to eat two bites as I watched my boys eating it with such bliss on their faces. I knew then it wasn’t just the food. It was the emotions behind it. If mom was cooking again, everything was going to be fine. We were going to be okay.
(Courtesy: Harper's Bazaar.)