LFC MUMBAI | JANUARY 2026
When I first heard about ‘leftovers’ as the theme for the October 2025 edition of the Local Food Club (LFC), something immediately clicked. I live alone, I barely cook, and I knew I wouldn’t be able to contribute food at the meetup in the usual way. But there was a memory that stayed with me—one that had to do with food, leftovers, and what it means to hold on to something.
My story is of a close family friend’s mother, but that distinction never mattered much in our lives. We lovingly called her ‘Dadi’. My siblings and I grew up around her, ate at her house, sat in her kitchen while she fed us. It didn’t matter if you had already eaten, if you arrived late, or if all she had left was a bowl of ice cream. She wouldn’t see someone sitting in her house without offering them food.
Among all the dishes she made, her Surmai fish curry stood out. As she grew older and cooked less frequently, she made the dish selectively, and somehow, it was always for us. Even if her son, my uncle, was travelling, she would call my family and tell us she was making her Surmai. Sometimes we would call her late at night, craving it. It became an association that stayed with all of us.
Dadi passed away at 90, having lived a full life. After she was gone, I remember aching at the realisation of how little of her we could hold on to for memory, apart from a few photographs and some habits we’d picked up. And, of course, the fond memory of how she cooked her Surmai fish curry.
Then, almost a year after her passing, I received an unexpected phone call.
Uncle asked my father if we wanted to eat his mother’s fish curry. We took it in jest and assumed he had found a restaurant that cooked something similar. Intrigued, we went along when he asked us to come over.
This is where the story really begins. My uncle had a large deep freezer at home, which he used for his food-related business. It was scheduled for its annual deep-clean, and it was then that someone found a metal tiffin box at the back. No one remembered what it contained.
No one could have guessed it was Dadi’s Surmai fish curry—frozen in time!
Dadi had cooked it months before her passing. After the family was done eating their share, she’d tucked away the leftovers in the freezer, where it stayed untouched until that day.
When the tiffin finally thawed and was opened, everyone in the room became teary-eyed. The aroma of the spices was unmistakable. It felt like Dadi’s presence had filled the space. We reheated it; nothing had changed. The taste was the same, the flavour, the feeling. It was as if she were still there, standing near us, urging us to eat more.
We’d found the artefact in the late afternoon, having already eaten lunch. Still, our appetites returned and we gathered whatever we could find—a few chapatis, some leftover bhakris, rice from the fridge. We didn’t want to waste even a spoonful of the treasure we had chanced upon. We ate with the same appetite, the same emotion, as if time had folded back on itself.