Seasoned

Seasoned

She’d be seeing her mother in a few hours. At a coffee shop. The clock ticked as she stood by the stove, hands hovering over the shallow pan.

The paneer sizzled as it dropped into the hot oil, and she turned it carefully. The steam wafted up as the small square blocks of cottage cheese turned golden, edges darkening slightly. She fished the paneer out of the pan and laid the cubes on paper towels, wicking excess oil before dropping the cubes into the spinach, palak, simmering in another pan. The spinach steamed. The heat of chili peppers mingled with the bite of garlic softened to mild gold in the hot oil. The clock ticked softly on the wall, its staccato beats becoming a comforting rhythm with the sizzling of the paneer. She placed one hand near the pan, almost touching the hot oil, to feel the heat of the flame and adjust it down. Burned food is bad food.

Carefully, to avoid breaking the delicate cubes, she stirred each paneer into the spinach. Her mother had made palak paneer on special occasions, cutting each cube of paneer carefully and frying them only if asked, otherwise letting the spinach and paneer slowly steam in the pot. Their family had eaten together every night, dinner made fresh every evening. Roti, paneer, yogurt; each item had its own distinguished place around the plate. An order that could not be broken, like the numbers around a clock.

Gradually she had come to realize that her mother cooked only out of obligation. She had tried not to hurt her mother’s feelings when the food had too much or too little salt, but she could tell her mother cooked out of habit and necessity, assuming the role of caretaker as her mother before her, but without any real love of the food and the transformation of the ingredients that made each meal.

School lunches were a daily struggle.

“Give me sandwiches,” she cried.

“Sandwiches? Not paratha? I made palak parathas today.” The green parathas lay in their paper towel wrapping. In childhood all she’d wanted was the simplicity of peanut butter and jelly, the efficiency of chicken nuggets dipped in ketchup and the portability of pasta in a small container.

“I just don’t know how you can eat this. Is it filling?” She agreed quickly, to avoid further conversation, this was exactly what she wanted. She wanted efficiency, something eaten quickly to leave more time for games of kickball and tag on the playground. She had not wanted her mother’s cooking, and she did not want to explain to anyone what the food was or what it meant to her.

Her mother, not understanding, had been unconvinced by the simplicity of a sandwich as substitute for culture. She had grown up in India, fed on not-just-food, but flavor and friendship, where every dish was an expression of tradition. She had been the center of her social circle. She had carried a lunch to school every day, bag swinging and hitting against her leg as she walked with her friends. Her mother’s mother, her grandmother, had a particular talent for making just what the kids wanted. Her mother would pass out the ladoos and halwas with delight, rejoicing in the care with which they were made and the joy that it brought to the others present, joy exchanged for a kind of social currency that ensured her mother never spent a day alone.

Now, gone were soft, fragrant rotis made with whole wheat and graham flour, turmeric and mustard seeds that graced dishes with their pungent flavors and cool cardamom contrasting with warm cloves to make sweets that lingered in your mouth long after they were eaten. Handed down for generations, from mother to daughter, packed in lunches and served on plates, each dish ladled with care. Where her mother had enjoyed sharing food with her friends, she now guarded hers. Gone were the school lunches of rice and roti, aloo and gobi, kichadi and paratha. She had eaten, demanded, devoured, sandwiches.

She had helped her mother cook dinner exactly once, and the night had ended in disaster. There had been nothing for dinner except rice that night, and the burned and congealed remains of sweet condensed-milk kheer and the blackened, too-crisp potatoes smelling of cumin and mixed with coriander and mustard seeds had remained stuck to their pots and had to be scrubbed out later. The matter was never discussed. Nothing boiled over. In their family, things simply simmered.

She turned the flame under the pan off and placed the other on a low simmer and set the lid on top. It was much quieter without the sizzle and crackle of the oil and the ticking seemed louder by comparison. She glanced up at the ticking offender, counting down the hours until the long-awaited meeting.

Eventually, the simple lunches of her elementary school days and family dinners had changed to meals cooked in the microwave, or quickly on the stove. Her brother had left for college and family dinners around the table didn’t happen as regularly. She had taught herself to cook, haltingly at first and with many failed attempts until she learned to look at the food and not the stove, learned to understand the language of changing smells and sounds, growing to appreciate each ingredient. One afternoon, she had endeavored to make up a meal from scratch, as practice and also for fun, eager to show off her new love. Her mother came into the kitchen brusquely after spending the morning clearing out the garage space to make some room for the renovations they were about to start.

“What’s all this mess?”

She looked up from chopping the onions. “I’m making dinner.” She watched as her mother glanced first at the kitchen counters and then the stove.

“You should be watching the stove. The heat is on.”

“I know it is, it needs to be. It’s simmering.”

“And why are you using that knife? That knife is terrible for cutting onions.” Her mother picked up several used kitchen towels and added them to the pile of dirty ones in her hands. “We have a perfectly good knife for onions in that drawer. And don’t use the metal utensils for that pan, use the wooden ones. And clean this up when you’re done in here.” She had left the kitchen with towels in hand. They had eaten dinner in silence that night.

She eventually left for school herself and hardly looked back. She traveled around the world, embracing her love for cooking thoroughly by applying to culinary school, ignoring the remarks made ironically that learning to cook foreign dishes was a useless skill that wouldn’t result in a viable career or way of life, and when would she settle down after all of that?

She turned off the stove, wiped her hands on the kitchen towel, changed into a sweater. At the coffee shop she ordered a cappuccino before sitting down and draping her coat over the back of the chair. She liked this café. There was usually a pleasant buzz of muted conversation accompanied by soft piano and the smells of fresh brewed coffee. It had been a frequent haunt when she first moved back, and the owner baked pastries every day, usually setting aside a croissant or muffin specifically for her. All the chairs matched in faded purple felt and each table was the same rough-hewn wood. The grains of the wooden table were worn but comfortably so, as if it had spent years outside in the sun, softening with weather and time before depositing itself in this corner café. As the steam rose from the coffee she stared at the swirls of milk and cream and thought of all the things she could say. The years had ballooned, and silence had grown into a chasm further than simply words could bridge across. Conversations had become a lost habit, and life had grown more complicated until the minutes between the phone calls were longer than the calls themselves.

The bell over the door jingled and she looked up to see her mother walking in. She was dressed warmly, scarf around her head and neck and sunglasses that she pulled off with one hand as she entered. Her head was turned toward the counter as she made her way there, and the door shut behind her with another jingle.

She waited until her mother had ordered and turned around before raising a hand and giving a slight wave. Her mother returned a smile, but it fell from her face as she walked over to the back-corner table. “You should sit up straighter, it’s better for your back.” Her mother’s hair had grown gray, and wisps of it escaped the scarf as she pulled out a chair clunking against the table, jarring the coffee.

“And hello to you too.”

They stared at each other over the mugs of coffee. Finally, her mother spoke. “I visited your brother. The baby is wonderful, she hardly ever cries.” She seized upon the subject as well, glad of something to say.

“Yes! She’s adorable. I’m glad they’re settling into the new house.”

“I brought all your old baby things to them; you don’t get quality like that now. I saved all your brother’s and your baby clothes just for this.”

The conversation stalled again. She resorted to staring at the table and tracing the patterns in the wood with her eyes.

“I had dinner with them last week,” she said, looking up to catch her mother’s eyes.

“It’s good you two keep in touch.” The words were acidic and lingered in the air. Her mother blew on the black coffee and put it down without taking a sip. The bell over the door jingled again and a group of pant-suited women walked in, chatting as they went up to order their drinks. “I should have called more.”

She looked up in surprise. “I didn’t either.”

“You’ve made a wonderful life for yourself.”

They lapsed into silence once more. She stared absently out the window. “Listen,” she began to say, at the same moment her mother started with “You know,” and they laughed momentarily.

“Go on,” her mother smiled for the first time since she had sat down. “You hardly ever talk now.”

“I was going to say, let’s have dinner tonight as well.”

“I was about to ask you the same. We can invite your brother.”

“No, I -” she stopped.

“It’ll be nice for all of us to spend some time together.”

“Right,” she said. “Yes.”

“It’ll be like it was before.”

“Yes.”

“We can order something. Your sister-in-law doesn’t like to cook very much.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll meet you here and we can drive over together. And change that sweater before tonight, it’s fading.”