Pooja’s story
Chetan never tells me what he likes or doesn’t like something I cook. If I serve him something without salt, he won’t add it while eating. Burnt or half-cooked is fine with him. He doesn’t complain. He says “Aachi hi toh bani hai.”And frankly, it’s annoying. I want actual review! What if I serve it to someone else thinking “achi hi hai”? Fir gaali padegi na”
A few weeks ago, while buying vegetables I saw tiny onions. They were cute. When I showed it to him, he said “arey, tumko nai malum. Iski bohot mast sabzi banti hai.” This was the first time I saw him be excited about something edible. My helper and I cooked the dish today. Neither of us knew how to make it or how it should taste. So YouTube zindabad! Saboot pyaz ki sabzi it’s called. We made this sabji with curiosity and a lot of trial and error. Just to be safe I added crushed peanuts to it because nothing can go wrong if it has peanuts in it.
The sabzi turned out yummy. And I finally saw him genuinely happy, not just being polite, about something I cooked.
Pooja and Chetan 
Pooja’s sabut pyaz ki sabzi
My experience cooking, eating and feeding Saboot Pyaaz ki Sabzi
- I have said this before but I will say it again: I enjoy cooking Indian food. It smells perfume worthy and has very high ROI in terms of street cred it earns me. I made this sabzi on papa’s birthday, so more than usual number of people ate it. And every person asked me how I made it. It was that good (and not difficult to make)
- The recipe Pooja sent me was in Marwadi. It confused me about my linguistic and cultural affiliations.
I always thought I am more Marathi than Marwadi. I was raised in Maharashtra and feel deep attachment to the language. I cannot get over certain words and consequently songs/poems. ‘Gahivarne’ is one of them. I feel similarly about Marwadi songs and words. Hearing people talk in Marwadi makes my insides bubble with warmth. So, I played the recipe loudly on my speakers, like a child high on candy running while yelling in a park. I blushed through the whole thing and am planning to hear food recipes for lullabies. - In the past, to make Datshi for Via Dil, I had found and used an authentic Nepalese video recipe. I deciphered what she was saying based on the video and some familiar words. I learned the real pronunciation of Datshi. It was a wholesome experience, comparable only to finding a cosy cafe with soothing music on a solo trip.
So, let’s all of us try to make a dish, the recipe for which we follow in a video of a language we don’t understand. Think of food from Kolkata, Nepal, Kerala or anywhere else in the world you feel like going. Send me links to the recipe you use, so I can share it with others.
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I have a wide family. By this I mean that I know and meet my mothers’ aunts’ children’s’ children and my fathers’s second cousin’s sister-in-law. We get together once every non-pandemic year and play stupid games, share life updates. A huge Whatsapp group takes care of the intermediate updates. But nothing comes close to how things were when I was little.
Apart from cohabiting this Whatsapp group, Pooja and I knew each other when we were little. I met her twice a week, went to the same school as her for 3 years, saw her wear and outgrow clothes. Then we were older, I moved away and went into a my trauma bubble. This month, after we spoke about Sabzis, we discussed a particular struggle we have in life. We sent each other virtual hugs and the night transformed to when I was 4 in a bed with her, talking about our siblings and schools. These are nights into which a lifetime of love and friendship are concentrated.
