Last week, I found my mother crying over a burnt pot of rice—she’d mixed the soibeh too early, like she used to in Shillong when meat was a Sunday thing and we counted every grain. I stirred it anyway, the bitterness mixing with the memory of pine smoke, thinking how hunger doesn’t care about your plans, only that you feed the ones you love. We ate it with salt and chilli, like we did in ’98, when the strikes kept the trucks from coming and the government forgot our names. Some recipes survive not because they taste good but because they keep us alive long enough to demand better.
#cooking
Jump in to reply — no account needed.
