Until the night before we were to leave for Dubai I didn’t allow myself to fully experience the anticipation of seeing my family again. I was nervous about the results of the PCR test. I was apprehensive something might go wrong with the flight. Until I was securely strapped to my seat on the aircraft, I remained in a state of certain disbelief. That’s how desperately I wanted to see my family again. Eventually, after finally landing and exiting the airport, there they were, and I hugged each of them with an intensity I hadn’t previously known. My mother was at home awaiting my arrival and when I touched and held her everything felt right once again. 

Since then, as per the D’Mello house rules, my life and schedule has revolved around eating, with the evening menu always being decided before lunch is even cooked. What can I tell you of that first morsel of steamed rice with prawn curry and fish and vegetable that I placed in my mouth. If home had a taste… this would be it. There is a thrill to each bite because of how long it has been since those flavours danced on my tongue. It isn’t that I took them for granted, it’s that I have been living in a place where they are rare, and despite being able to make many things for myself, there is an indescribable pleasure in being fed. That is what I have missed most. Perhaps that is precisely what we all miss when we think about our parents’ kitchens. It is a particular joy, to be provided for in this way, to be indulged, to have my father go buy me mangoes because Mani, the maid, said the Pakistani kind was still very much available. To ask for the dishes that delight me most, like the bone meat curry my father makes, with which I am not afraid to admit I can never compete. And to suck the marrow and to use my fingers unabashedly, and to have vegetable over which grated coconut has been generously sprinkled. And to have Mani’s biryani, which is excellent on many counts, but mostly because it was differently satisfying to be nourished by the labour of someone who doesn’t know how else to communicate their joy of seeing you but by feeding you.