This weekend I’m determined to jot down as many of my mother’s recipes as I can. It’s an important exercise but also a frustrating one because mama keeps telling me all the spices she puts in andaazey se (intuitively). That does nothing for me. 

My introduction to the kitchen was through baking. All the ingredients measured, 2 cups this, half teaspoon that, baked at 350 degrees fahrenheit. Now while trying to make my mother’s dishes, not only am I juggling the stove settings between low, medium and high, I’m supposed to know exactly what is meant by hazbe zaiqa (salt to taste) and trust my unpredictable gut. 

Despite having to play this guessing game, I do savour this opportunity to document mama’s recipes. Like it is for many of us, my mother’s food is what has anchored many of my days. And I have so many favourites! So many dishes that feel right only when she makes them. I understand there’s a lot of sentimentality to it all, and at the end of the day, me noting down mama’s recipes is quite an exercise in nostalgia. 

Right now, I’m watching mama make meetha paratha (a sugary layered flatbread) like her mom, my nani, used to make. She adds a pinch of salt to the dough, some ghee, and gently kneads it until she feels the texture is right. I’m imagining nani, spreading it out and sprinkling a generous amount of sugar in the middle the same way mama is doing, then folding in all four sides before rolling it out again. 

Mostly what I’ve heard of my nani has been that she was a woman of few words and abundant patience. For almost all her life, one or all of her sisters-in-law lived in the same home, and she graciously took care of them and hosted other relatives on top of that. Her food, which she made with a lot of care, was well loved by everyone, and to this day I’ve heard mama’s cousins talk about her generosity with a lot of admiration. 

Having never met her, I’d lap up these stories, trying to form a picture of her in my mind. But as I’ve grown older, that story has given way to a lot of questions. Unfortunately, most of these questions only she could have answered. How did she really feel with all that responsibility? Was it exhausting? Did she want to ever put her hands up and just not do it anymore? Did she have dreams before she got married that she’d slowly given up on?

I know that even though my nani only taught mama to make roti (bread) and chai, she inherited a lot of those expectations. The kitchen and the food and the hosting in our home was her forte, whether that was what she wanted to do with her life or not. She was of a generation that was given the “choice” of working or pursuing hobbies, but all of that was still secondary to maintaining the house and putting food on the table for breakfast, lunch, tea, snacks, and dinner. Thankfully she didn’t inherit the silence. She often expressed her anxieties and frustrations and demanded ease where she could get it. She put in time and money in things that interested her which included buying a PSP, taking graphic design courses and memorizing the Quran. 

Oops! I’ve let my thoughts wander again and missed vital instructions while the paratha was on the tawa. I can smell the sugar melting into the ghee between the layers. I’ll have to pretend I’ve noted down the technique, hoping I can fill in the gaps in the process by asking questions later. 

I often find myself trapped in this mental quagmire. On one hand, I admire the warmth and nourishment that have been given to me by the women in my life. On the other hand, when I look deeper, I catch a glimpse of a certain cost that has been incurred by most of them. A cost they’ve paid over decades; the constant mental load, postponement of dreams, exhaustion not even acknowledged at times. And then I grieve. 

I’m afraid my mental quagmire is going to make the meetha paratha bitter just by proximity. Mama is putting in her final touches, and I’ve mindlessly put the saucepan on the stove to make chai. I mean, of course, how else am I supposed to have the paratha. 

I like our kitchen. One of my favourite things to do on the weekend is make my own breakfast in the morning when everyone is asleep. It’s been my refuge, more times than I can count. However, I’m slowly understanding that my relationship with cooking, baking or the kitchen is what it is because I have actively worked to not inherit the expectations my mother did. I’ve been anything but silent. I’ve felt this imbalance within these traditional roles, sometimes so, that it has inadvertently spilled out of me on dining tables and drawing rooms even when all everyone was looking for was polite conversation over the tea trolley.

This is no surprise anymore because I am part of a generation of daughters who have felt their mother’s exhaustion or the unseen labour and tried to build their lives differently. At the same time, I am also acutely aware that not everyone has this choice. There are many young women who are still operating within dynamics where the pressure of society is so immense that fitting into the mold laid out for them is akin to survival. So, they continue holding the weight of a family’s expectations while they still try to build a life for themselves. 

Mama and I finally sit down to have our meetha paratha with chai, and I look at her, do a little happy shoulder shimmy, and we both laugh. Along with the recipe, I note, the warmth and laughter that comes with food on the table will only deepen when the effort being made is born of choice, not unchallenged expectation.