#scurf100: this time last week
delhi winter rains and reading and writing and trying to do a lot more on a rainy Winter Delhi morning
This morning after waking up, I drew the curtains and it was rains, outside waiting for us. The sun had bidden us goodbye, not even pretending to hide behind clouds, only a cold wind penetrating my insides as I silently stepped into my bedroom’s tiny balcony. A chill trickled down my oiled hair, a tiny nip crept up my toes. The cold was here and the cold was mine, chai, rusks and all.
Then came the “Food”.
The handcart in front of my 2017-2020 office in Central Delhi offered several winter delicacies. They all included copious amounts of sugar, gur and peanuts. The cart, sometimes replaced by a roadside stall, almost always had a low-lit flame buried inside a heaping pile of peanuts. Sometimes in place of the peanuts was popcorn. Desi, bulbous popcorn. The one I had grown up buying off from the street and having. Surprising how popcorn worth Rs5 for a large paper bag now only costs Rs10.
On rained in afternoons like today’s, I would stroll up and down the busy KG Marg usually with my two friends, feeling emotionally warmed up and also cosying up quickly to the cart, cupping my hands around the glowing embers of the alao.
These edible delicacies created a veneer of comfort outside the womb of the centrally heated office building. We looked for excuses to step out and never come back in. Those ingredients, like our delicate friendship, fostered a warmth into my body creating an essential grotto for them in my life. This became all the more needed because of the early sunsets leaving the city both dark and cold, and also strangely beautiful.
After I moved to Delhi in the spring of 2017, food became so much of a part of my life here that I came to associating the city, its people and all its experiences with food. And more so the Delhi winter with its mulled wines, its malpua, its Nihari, its thukpa, its soupy momos, its slurry doodh jalebis, its kulhad ki chais, its makke di roti, and its various saaghs. It may be a function of my existence here or perhaps my boyfriend and a snug circle of friends that has imbued in me a new sense of appreciation of cuisines.
For over the last three years that we have been together, M makes me have different cuisines. Last night, it was Korean. For lunch today we are having Italian. For the last couple of years, each week we try to cook more than we order in. For new year’s I mulled wine, spread out a cheese platter and had it with everyday cold cuts alongside chorizos and Salchichóns.
As I type this, we wait for our meal for the day. Just to spruce up this curfewed-rained-in-Saturday noon I also ordered some coffee toffee ice cream. I might cook daal along with aaloo gobhi for dinner tonight. As I plan the meal mentally, I can already hear the tinkling of dishes and smell the garlic-y scent of the tadka I plan on preparing.
For New Year’s we also bought banana bread and then due to one thing or the other we couldn’t eat it for a handful of days. Later, a friend came over, surprising us, and brought along homemade banana cake. It was so delicious, stilling our beating hearts. Slightly eggy as my friend pointed out. And oh-so-moist. Glazed in love and attention of this friend, the cake added a new flavour to our Saturday then. Maybe the cake also led to a stronger friendship, but it definitely made our lunch so much better.
Food brings people together. Cakes tend to strengthen relationships. It’s the egg or the egg-substitute that binds the eaters together. Even though I am allergic to eggs, I was able to enjoy the cake, one egg for one cake was just about sublime for my gut’s tolerance. It made think how maybe then cakes bind people together because they create a gut-level friendship. We were so happy after eating it.
It had been a long week of working, being, and living. As this friend, my boyfriend and I talked, it felt like it was happening from afar. They wouldn’t have known, I didn’t know that I will write about them, about us, about our last Saturday meal together.
On this curfew-ed in afternoon, as the silences ring far and wide, I try to recall the cacophony of this time last week. Our lunch and chatter. After the meal I had washed the oil out of my head and we had taken a walk in the neighbourhood park. Since then, the park has been going through maintenance work. The gardens have been upturned, workers are tilling the soils with better manure. Each time I took a walk after last Saturday, I thought about my friend and how nothing remained the same since that afternoon we spent together, and not in a bad way, but also not in a good way.
Soon I will be 31, and if all goes the way it’s going now, I might celebrate the birthday alone. She won’t be with me then. Work and growing up means you can only spend some time together. And then throw Covid into the mix. It means there are no certainties whatsoever. She’ll be in her house, we might do a video call, but we will definitely exchange messages. And I know to celebrate me she’ll eat something special that day. And think of me. And then in a few months it will be her birthday and things might be different then. And we might celebrate it together, or we might not.
Links to songs, essays, movies and cats I’ve enjoyed:
https://lithub.com/almost-every-cultural-reference-in-pretend-its-a-city-annotated/
https://t.co/fATn9nC1WT
https://longreads.com/2021/07/22/i-miss-it-all-devin-kelly/
follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/anandi010
read my words here: https://anandimishra.contently.com/
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