Dinner Time Ritual

The dining room is spacious and empty. The two people in this huge apartment take up very little space. At two a.m. on chilly Diwali nights like this, when he comes home late from work, she stays up just to reheat his dinner.

The size of the room feels wasteful. The two forms, shivering only slightly, seem tense and compact against the cold draft in the corner of the room.

This is all about to change.

He walks in and takes off his damp top layer of clothing. A deep hum emanates from the kitchen as the smell of food wafts out.

This is a feast. The cold, drafty dining room starts to transform. Golden light from the kitchen floods the room, and plates of food appear on the table. The bowls are filled to the brim. So what if it is only for one man? The man can eat! And he does.

He sits at the head of an oval table, even though he is alone. Asserts his manliness by occupying space, now that the warmth from the hot food has started to make its way to his body. Shoulders no longer shrugging, burdened by the cold.

The feast has not begun yet.

She brings out the roti, finally. It is well enough, though. Digging into the bowls of hot sabzi would have burned the roof of his mouth in an instant.

Reheated rotis have a very specific scent. Something completely unlike the smell of freshly made ones. The man savours this; he closes his eyes and takes a deep breath in. In this moment, you hear his stomach begging him to stop delaying this gratification. His slow exhale is accompanied by a rumble. Surprised, the man and the woman both look at his stomach and smile.

He tears into his first roti, and steam escapes from the thin layers of bread. The woman spoons the three different sabzis onto his plate in perfect formation. The soup from each only slightly touching the other, but never touching the roti. He did not like it when his roti got soggy.

Making the perfect bite was an artform in this household. The textures and tastes had to be balanced. He tears out a little triangle from the round bread and fashions it into a spoon-like shovel. He then uses it to pick up a little bit of each sabzi.

Finally, he opens up wide, but wait, there’s something missing.

The woman anticipates this delay and emerges from the kitchen with a jar full of fresh, crunchy bhujia, best described as...savory sprinkles. He dabs his shovel full of flavor onto the puddle of bhujia on his plate, and the tiny sprinkles start to stick to the mass in his hand.

The bite is sonorous.

You can hear him go from the crunchy outer layer to the soft bread and, finally, the soupy interior.

His stomach rumbles again as if the singular bite only made its hunger deeper, more intense. From here, the bites are faster and more desperate. The woman watches him eat and occasionally spoons more food onto his plate. The smell of food, the sound of chewing, and the golden glow of the stove occupy space. The empty dining room seems satiated with human presence.