---
title: Learning to Cook from Amma | Bachpan Diaries
description: A personal memory about learning to cook by hand and by smell, not by measurement, and the moment a mother finally says, it's your dal now. In Hindi too.
image: https://bachpandiaries.com/hubfs/bachpan-diaries-theme/blog/featured%20images/PNGs/Learning%20to%20Cook%20from%20Amma.png
---
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# Learning to Cook from Amma
By Manoj Rajput • April 11, 2026
Now Playing Learning to Cook from Amma
0:00 / —
1×
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.
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✦ Kahaani Khatam ✦
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Manoj Rajput
I'm the founder of Bachpan Diaries. I started this project chasing down the small, ordinary memories of growing up in India that never seem to get written down anywhere, madaari shows, school bells, dabbas from home. I still read every story myself before it goes up.
FROM THE ARCHIVE
## Continue the Journey
### [ Ages 18–40 हिं The taandh ran the full length of the wall, corner to corner, and the television sat right on it, a curtain hanging in front, kept closed most days. Coming back, not from school, from tuition, pulling the curtain aside and fixing the antenna was always the first thing to happen. Read story → Bachpan Diaries · 3 min read Do You Remember Shaktimaan? Nostalgia The taandh ran the full length of the wall, corner to corner, and the television sat right on it, a curtain hanging in front, kept closed most days. Coming back, not from school, from tuition, pulling the curtain aside and fixing the antenna was always the first thing to happen. Manoj Rajput Oct 2](https://bachpandiaries.com/stories/do-you-remember-shaktimaan)
### [ Ages 18–40 हिं He used to grab hot, burning plastic with his bare hands sometimes, quick, almost bored about it, moving it aside before it could do real damage, like his hands had already decided this was fine. He was a supervisor in a factory that used to build plastic containers, Delhi, night shifts mostly. For two years, when I was ten, we lived inside that factory. Not near it, inside it. Read story → Bachpan Diaries · 5 min read What He Left Behind Family He used to grab hot, burning plastic with his bare hands sometimes, quick, almost bored about it, moving it aside before it could do real damage, like his hands had already decided this was fine. He was a supervisor in a factory that used to build plastic containers, Delhi, night shifts mostly. For two years, when I was ten, we lived inside that factory. Not near it, inside it. Manoj Rajput Sep 7](https://bachpandiaries.com/stories/what-he-left-behind)
### [ Ages 18–40 हिं It was afternoon, the kind of hour when the street usually went quiet, just the fan whirring and a radio playing somewhere far off. Then came a sound, dum, dum, dum, someone was playing a damroo, still far away, but our ears were already up. Spoons got left mid bite, slippers stayed behind, we just ran for the gully. Read story → Bachpan Diaries · 4 min read Madaari, The Monkey Show Nostalgia It was afternoon, the kind of hour when the street usually went quiet, just the fan whirring and a radio playing somewhere far off. Then came a sound, dum, dum, dum, someone was playing a damroo, still far away, but our ears were already up. Spoons got left mid bite, slippers stayed behind, we just ran for the gully. Manoj Rajput Aug 11](https://bachpandiaries.com/stories/madaari)
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He used to grab hot, burning plastic with his bare hands sometimes, quick, almost bored about it, moving it aside before it could do real damage, like his hands had already decided this was fine. He was a supervisor in a factory that used to build plastic containers, Delhi, night shifts mostly. For two years, when I was ten, we lived inside that factory. Not near it, inside it.
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