LFC GOA | October 2025
I grew up on morsels of rice that fit into the palm of a hand. In Malayalam, we call it ‘urula chor’—a handmade portion of rice rolled into a perfect bite. My earliest memory of my mother, Ani, is her feeding me these. She was a dramatic person, making up songs to coax me into eating. She would mix my favourite combination—chicken curry, fried okra, and rice—turning the act of feeding into performance, singing the names of dishes and ending with a “Chicken Curry!” which was my cue to open my mouth wide.
Ani (short for Anitha) never wanted to be called ‘mumma’ or ‘ma’. Everyone in the family called her by her name, and that suited her better. She was busy, pragmatic, and not someone who particularly enjoyed cooking, though she was an excellent cook. Yet, after long days at work, she would return home and make time for these small rituals of us eating together. That chicken curry of hers—made with Everest Chicken Masala, chilli powder, turmeric, and black pepper—was legendary in our home.
Ani relied on store-bought masalas—she hated the labour of grinding her own. I, on the other hand, took pleasure in it. When I worked as a food reporter at a newspaper in Chennai, I started cooking more seriously, trying to understand dishes deeply so I could write about them better. Later, when Ani became ill with cancer, cooking became my way of reaching her again by preparing meals that might tempt her appetite.
Ani is no more, so when I brought this dish to the LFC meetup in Goa, I did so in her memory. For the occasion, I reimagined it as a one-pot dish. I folded fried okra into the rice so the oil from the vegetable seeped into the grains, coating them with flavour. A touch of ghee softened the rice; alongside it sat the chicken curry, fragrant with curry leaves, onions, tomatoes, and potatoes.
My relationship with my mother was complicated, as layered as the meal itself. Like a dish with changing flavours, it had both bitter and sweet notes, salt, and heat. She was a bundle of contradictions—nurturing yet sharp, supportive yet capable of wounding me in ways only a mother can. Negotiating with her, sometimes asserting myself, sometimes submitting, shaped the feminist I went on to become. Even today, when I cook her chicken curry, my nostalgia is tangled with anger.
"My relationship with my mother was complicated, as layered as the meal itself. Like a dish with changing flavours, it had both bitter and sweet notes, salt, and heat."
Food is inseparable from memory. I can still smell the biscuits Ani burned. She never baked, but when she tried, she left the biscuits a shade too dark. I loved those charred edges then, and I still do now.
The dish she made for me as a child—rice, chicken curry, fried okra, and papaddam—was also the lunch I carried to school. Packed neatly in stacked steel carriers, it was the meal I would draw out as long as possible, still chewing as the teacher walked into class. That combination of flavours—soft rice, spiced curry, slick okra, and the crisp snap of papaddam—remains one of my favourites.
To this day, I make it at least once a month.