My mother never measured anything.
A handful of this. Enough of that. Cook it until it smells right.
I stood in her kitchen for years watching her and understood nothing. The information was all there — I could see her hands, see what she added, see when she stirred and when she didn't. But the knowledge that lived in her hands did not transfer through watching. I know this now.
The summer I turned twenty-six, I asked her to teach me her dal.
She said — come stand here.
She made me do everything. Not watch. Do. She guided my hand to show me how much jeera. She made me smell the onions at different stages of cooking so I could learn to tell by smell when they were ready. When I added too much water she didn't tell me — she made me watch what happened to the texture and figure out why it was wrong.
It took the whole morning for one pot of dal.
She tasted it at the end and said nothing, which is her version of good.
I make that dal now. Not exactly as she makes it — mine is slightly different, slightly more of the jeera, not quite the same timing on the onions. It is the dal as it passed through me.
My mother tasted it once when she came to visit.
She said — "it's your dal now."
I have been thinking about that sentence for two years. What it means to receive something and make it yours. What gets lost in the transfer and what, somehow, survives.
