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Why sharing home-cooked meals is a way of building family for one South Asian writer

March 24, 2023

We South Asians come from large families and build tight-knit communities when we move as immigrants.

As a graduate student, I saved to buy gifts for my family alongside the cheapest plane ticket. I counted more than 60 cousins, aunts, uncles, neighbors and well-wishers who were family. Every other year I returned, my suitcases filled with American goods – Kirkland cashews, Costco socks, Marshalls’ cashmere sweaters and, of course, Hershey’s chocolates from Target.

This was America that they knew – the land of Dove deodorants and Gillette razors. They eagerly awaited these gifts, and I gladly obliged. After all, the universal immigrant message was that we’ve made it. The aftershave for our uncle was proof.

Years passed. Grandmothers, uncles, parents, older cousins departed this earth. I’ve lived in America longer than India, relinquished my Indian citizenship and gained an American one. Home seems like many cities and yet none of them. As the youngest cousin, I am one of the few surviving Ghosh members. Now I live alone, child-free by choice, with no parents or spouse anymore. I am an outlier South Asian.

Growing up, our family home was filled with relatives visiting from Kolkata. Baba showed them the sights of New Delhi, heading to Sarojini Nagar Market for the latest kameezes, or Palika Bazaar for bootlegged Levis or secondhand Sidney Sheldon paperbacks.

Ma’s kitchen was a flurry with luchis frying in peanut oil, chicken cooking in a whistling pressure cooker, the smells of cinnamon ground with cloves sautéed in ghee mixed with grated onions/ginger/garlic, ready for minced goat curry.

Every weekend was a roaring gas flame roasting eggplant, or a turmeric-coated piece of hilsa or rohu sizzling in oil. We children – out of my mother’s path – stole a potato fry, sometimes a gajaa (fried dough dunked in sugar syrup). Our world was food – the prep, the cooking, the serving and then the cleanup. And repeat.

Madhushree Ghosh is the author of “Khabaar: An Immigrant Journey of Food, Memory and Family.” She lives in San Diego. (Photo courtesy Madhushree Ghosh)

In America, I continued the Ghosh tradition. I cooked woks of cauliflower curry, masoor dal with onion seeds in ghee, chicken curry with cashews and garam masala for friends. I married for love, spent weekends cooking for my now-ex’s vegetarian family – spicy tomato rasam, eggplant with ground peanuts.

In a decade, the marriage sputtered. The parties stopped, dinners quit, and I was left with an empty house. I kept cooking, as if cooking would bring the magic back. Bowls of chicken curry, degchis of coconut shrimp, lamb curry haandis with ginger. In the empty house I cooked, reliving the comfort of knowing I had a family. But it didn’t matter – my parents were gone, my marriage was dead.

Life, however, predictably moves, even when heartbreak stalls time. My closest friends became family – we were “framily.” Now, every Diwali – the Festival of Lights – we celebrate with food. Then they clean up, fold the chairs away, toss the tablecloths in the washing machine, leftovers in Tupperware – much like my parents’ friends would when I was a child.

When the pandemic stalled our lives, I still cooked. I made boxes of fried rice with sautéed raisins, chicken curry in yogurt sauce, mustard fish steamed in banana leaves, sabudana khichdi – tapioca pearls with potatoes. I drove to the framily, honked outside, and they came down, masked, in sweatpants, happy to get food filled with love. We thought this would last a few weeks – every Friday, we Zoomed discussing the nothingness of a pandemic lockdown.

Then, when the pandemic dragged on, I decided to grow food to feed the framily. I filled my tiny yard with planters. An experiment. Could I do what my Baba used to? Grow enough vegetables? After all, experiments fail.

That year, I grew greens, beets, cauliflower and pea shoots to feed my neighbors, friends, caterpillars and the occasional bug. Then, I graduated to bitter melon, green beans and kale alongside eggplants. I cook the greens with an occasional potato curry or a steamed fish. When life morphs, we transform expectations to hold love and food as the gift.

Who knows where we are headed next? After all, life doesn’t have a straightforward formula. But does it matter if our hearts hold “yes” and “joy” to guide us through it?

This story is part of a collection of stories printed Sunday, March 26, 2023.
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