Love In A Dumpling

A LOT OF PEOPLE FIND GOD IN PRAYER, meditation, asana, and service. Fair enough. I found God in dumplings.

- Jaimal Yogis

I was 23 and studying abroad in India. I’d befriended a Buddhist monk, Sonam, who was famous for two things: being relentlessly upbeat and making perfect momos, Tibetan dumplings.

Missing my carb-rich, American diet, momos had become my comfort food in India, and Sonam had agreed to teach me his recipe. We met to mix the riceflour dough on the roof of his monastery, using a sheet of plywood raised on cinder blocks as a table. I watched as Sonam rolled out a thin sheet of dough, carved sand dollar–size noodles, and filled each with a pinch of cabbage and cheese. Finally, as if swaddling a newborn, he folded each round noodle carefully into a momo.

“Now you,” Sonam said in his thickly accented broken English. I tried to copy Sonam, but all my attempts ended in messy piles of dough, cheese, and cabbage that resembled cat vomit. “Berry good, Ja-ma,” Sonam laughed. After several failed attempts, I found myself making little dough balls I hoped would taste like gnocchi. A silence passed until Sonam said, “I tink dis God. Buddha mind berry same same.” 

“Really?” I said.