You will ask for amounts and ingredients and she will evade and be vague. You will stand with pen and paper in hand and in the end, your notes will be approximations, like a thumbnail sketch of an urban landscape. You will learn by close observation, tasting and then trying on your own; improvising with what you have on hand, knowing that your version today will by necessity be different from hers, different than yesterday, and hopefully quite delicious.

My father was born in Bombay, India.  My mother was of Scottish decent, born in San Antonio Texas. They met at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and married. Several years later, when I was just over a year old, my mother was diagnosed with stage 4 Hodgkin’s disease.  My mother’s family did not approve of “mixed race” marriages or of modern medicine, so they were absent from this chapter. On the other hand, my father’s youngest brother and his wife became the heroes of our lives.

Uncle Arnold and Auntie Meenal were newlywed, young residents at the University of Iowa, on call every other night. Exhausted and without financial means, they opened their tidy, one-bedroom duplex to us. They orchestrated my mother’s medical care, navigating her to the best surgeons and oncologists. While she was hospitalized, they gave me and my father their bedroom and they slept on the floor or couch. Not only did they house and feed us, Auntie Meenal bathed me, dressed me and made giant messes with me in the kitchen.