I made charvelu eedu with lilu lasan today. That’s Parsi speak for scrambled eggs with fresh green garlic in them.
A winter take that our late Jamshed uncle loved. He once called us home for it.
When I went to the kitchen this morning I got the smell of someone making sukha batata chi bhaaji. Possibly the Maharashtrian family from the ground floor. Perhaps for Sankranti lunch. Most people have lunch by the time I have breakfast. I prefer eggs to worms. I see no point in being an early bird.
I could have been wrong about my guess, but what else could the playful aroma of mustard seeds dancing in the kadhai, accompanied by the robust smell of haldi, be.
The smell of Goan sausages enveloped me like a tempestuous lover as I began making my eggs. We have an elderly Goan and East Indian couple living in the apartment beside ours. Was it coming from their house? If so, then one can but hope to enjoy Goan sausages when we are there age.
In the evening one gets the regal aromas of Mughlai cooking. The cook of the neighbours below comes to work then and the tantalising aromas of dinner being cooked heralds her august presence.
What are the food smells emanating from our kitchen I wonder. Is it of panchphoron or kalo jeere jumping into mustard oil? The prominently heady flavours of fish head dal? Or that of soy sauce when I make the Hakka noodles. I so love. Or East Indian masala from the prawn chilli fry that I make for my lobster.
There are so many stories that are told by the kitchens of apartments in a building. This is not an original thought. I think Jhumpa Lahiri had written about this in one of her short stories. Or was it Elif Shafek?
That’s the thing about fiction. One might go blue in the face denying it, at a fundamental level, fiction is rooted in one’s life experiences. Or nightmares and dreams. Which are rooted in life experience! Tell me the stories of your neighbours as told by their kitchens.
