The first time my mother sent a dabba, I was twenty-two and living in a paying guest accommodation in Delhi that smelled of damp walls and someone else's cooking.
The dabba arrived by courier — a steel tiffin wrapped in newspaper and then in a plastic bag and then in another plastic bag, as if the contents were fragile, which they were not, but my mother treats all food as fragile.
Inside: dal makhani, roti wrapped in foil, a small container of achaar, and — tucked in the corner — four digestive biscuits in a ziplock bag because she knows I eat biscuits with tea at ten o'clock at night.
I sat on my bed and ate the dal cold because I couldn't find my way to the communal kitchen without running into the landlady. The rotis had gone a little stiff. The achaar was exactly right.
I called my mother after.
"Did you get it?" she said.
"Yes," I said.
"Was the dal okay? I was worried about the dal."
The dal was fine. The dal was more than fine. The dal was the first thing I had eaten in three weeks that tasted like something I recognised.
I didn't say any of this. I said "yes, the dal was good," and she said "I put in extra butter," and I said "I could tell," and we talked for eleven minutes about nothing important and then I said goodnight.
After I hung up I sat for a while in the dark. Outside, Delhi was doing what Delhi does — loud, unceasing, indifferent to the fact that I was twenty-two and a long way from home and eating cold dal out of a steel tiffin.
The digestive biscuits were still in the ziplock bag. I saved them for ten o'clock.
