Soul Food

 

- Avni Doshi

A Feast Of Love

Avni Doshi On Her Family's Intertwining Legacy Of Food And Love

The shutter speed is on automatic but I control the aperture. I focus on a steel thali filled with little mountains of food, a topography of tender greens, oily and dotted with jeera, and eggplant, fried, tempered, yellowed with turmeric. The pillowy rotis are starting to deflate. I work quickly, trying shots from different angles, considering the light in my grandmother’s flat, the grey, wooden floor that forms the background, and the reflections of faces in the metal plate.

Mum speaks to Nani in Gujarati behind me, “It will be cold by the time she actually eats it.”

Nani laughs and replies, “Why is she taking so many pictures?”

I look at my mother and my mother looks at me. We don’t answer my grandmother and she soon forgets her own question. Nani is smiling, happy. I wish I could be happy, but I want too badly to remember all the flavours my grandmother has fed me, every dish that has come out of her kitchen, the ideal season for each vegetable. Our family comes together around my grandmother’s kindness and her meals. From far away places, we make yearly pilgrimages to marvel that something can still taste so good. We share stories, hurl insults, we fight, and make up. Every bite is a memory.

But we knew something was wrong the day Nani couldn’t remember a recipe. A simple Sindhi pickle, made with cauliflower, carrot, mustard, and rye. She used to know it like the back of her hand. The doctor says this is just the beginning, that eventually she will forget my name.

We are losing a little bit of her everyday. I tell my shrink my heart is breaking but the truth is I feel it most in my stomach, in the watery unease of my gut.