Mina Rozario
Niha yanks a comb through her long, jet-colored locks, roughly undoing the twists and snarls that fan from her head like snakes. Appa rummages around in the kitchen somewhere, the clang of pots and pans reverberating through the whole apartment.
He’ll burn the whole place down if I don’t check what he’s doing, Niha thinks to herself, though she doesn’t move.
Her father starts to call out her name but bites the word off at one syllable. She dimly overhears a muttered curse before the din starts again, a war of cast iron and stainless steel waged in her tiny, sparsely-equipped kitchen.
She cringes a little at the thought, but stuffs it away, having resolved not to interfere. If Ammi were around, Niha thinks wryly, she’d have chased Appa out of the kitchen with a wooden spoon long ago. Her mother, who had never held a job beyond the upkeep of her household, regarded her kitchen as her own private fortress, its intimidatingly tall bulwarks of stacked spices, pastes, and herbs deterrents against the less competent. Everyone else who entered was a bumbling interloper at best, an intruder at worst.
“I’m not going to cook much anyway,” a high school-aged Niha had grumbled sullenly after overcooking her rice (when she had suggested buying a rice cooker years earlier, Ammi exclaimed, “Who are these people trying to scam? We have pots and pans right here!”) “I’d rather meal prep.”
“Meal prep?” Her mother had repeated those two words as if they were blasphemy.
“It’s supposed to be efficient.”
Her mother made a sharp clicking noise with her tongue. “Chee! You think your father would eat old food?”
Niha hadn’t pressed the point. In the mornings, while Appa sat reading his newspaper, her mother would brew coffee and fry adai or heat fragrant idlis, often pounding chutneys out by hand. By the time everyone had eaten, it would be time to wash the dishes—and then start cooking again for lunch.
“I’m busy,” Niha had often said, when her mother would herd her into the kitchen to ask—or rather, coerce—her to help. “Really—Ammi, I have things to do!”
Appa, lounging on the couch which his feet propped up, would absentmindedly offer something along the lines of, “Niha, listen to your mother,” and Ammi would look increasingly pinched and harrowed.
“You think I came out of the womb cooking?” she asked Niha, though her tone was more melancholy than irate. “I used to ‘have things to do’ too, you know. I was going to be a singer.”
The sputter of hot oil cracks through the air, and Niha winces, wondering if avoiding the kitchen was a mistake. Appa has barely cooked in his life. Truth be told, she isn’t sure if he is trying to prove something—not to her, but himself—or if this is his way of rebelling against her meal-prepped food.
“Niha?” Her father, at long last, peers through the door. He looks utterly exhausted, graying hair sticking up in random directions, sweat dampening the swell of his potbelly under his shirt. “The mutton thadka is ready.”
Against her will, she’s impressed. “Was that what all that ruckus was?” she teases lightly.
Appa visibly sags. “I never realized how difficult it was.”
She stands up and follows him to the kitchen, where he has already set out two plates for them. She helps herself to a small amount of rice and mutton. Appa is looking at her, nervous.
“It’s not going to be good, is it?”
“It doesn’t matter,” she soothes. She carefully takes a bite. The meat is overcooked, and the rice is wet, though the seasoning is surprisingly well balanced. She can taste potential in this dish.
Appa’s face falls as he takes his own bite. He shakes his head ruefully. “I knew that would happen.”
“It was a good effort. Ammi would be proud.”
He smiles at that. A month earlier he would have thundered at Niha for even daring to mention her mother. “Don’t lie—she would be horrified.”
“Maybe you could use the rice cooker next time. It’ll help.”
He chortles. “I’ll have to keep trying.”
Niha has a vivid image of her mother on a stage, warbling a note of an old Tamil song to a rapt, middle-aged audience, while her husband prods at a rice cooker halfway across the country. She wonders if it’s wrong that the thought fills her with a quiet sense of relief.
Nevertheless, she smiles at her father, who is shifting wet rice around on his plate.
“You’ll get there,” she promises.
Mina Rozario
Mina is an Indian-American writer and technical product manager. She frequently draws inspiration from elements of Indian culture and often reflects on the shift of values and traditions through the lens of her own upbringing. Her non-work hours consist of dreaming up storylines, learning new dance styles, and trying not to kill her plants. You can find more of her work at minarozario.wordpress.com.