The one with karhi and REM
There is no one more grating than the person who posts a variation of the tweet ‘oh no here's the story before I have to click on the recipe', a thousand ungrateful fucks who want free labour, who don't care about where a dish comes from, of what it means to someone, who can’t read three hundred words. You can always scroll right down, it doesn't take more than a few seconds, certainly less time than it does to make your cliched little point.
Anyway, here's a story about a recipe but there is no recipe!
I recently wondered about whether there were other people in the world who seemed to go about their day seemingly recovered or not haunted by trauma. What must that be like for them?
There has been push back against the idea of the 'trauma plot', that somehow 'everything' is about trauma. I find it so bizarre to think about things this way: if you've experienced trauma, there is a reminder in things you didn't anticipate. A Little Life, which I guess falls squarely in the trauma plot category, unlocked tears I didn’t even know I had. I have never cried so therapeutically since.
What if even a recipe reminds you of the past? Is that the trauma plot, or just your past?
I watch The Bear. Fishes reminds me of the past, I am angered by the images passing through my brain, the chaos reminds me of the way we used to be, and even of the happier times. REM is on the soundtrack, and I am sent back into an REM spiral, the once-soundtrack to my life, I still know every song by heart, I'm bending spoons. I am writing in a cafe and The Great Beyond brings me to near tears, I start writing with a manic energy, I cycle home, itching to get back to the music. I am reminded of the former friend who also used to like REM, who would not skip over At My Most Beautiful because I liked it too, and who I can never message now and say REM reminds me of him because he is dead.
Too many people are dead, I think, and there are too many things that remind me of them. Trauma plot, or imitation of life?
I read Small Fires by Rebecca May Johnson. It is the best book I’ve read in ages. I think about recipes, and cooking, and just how great this book is.
I make a to-do list.
Aloo gobi/karhi?
I have been thinking about cooking karhi for weeks, but mostly since Eid, because karhi is my favourite dish, was my mother's favourite dish, and was one of the last things she cooked before she died, over the Eid holiday.
After she died, or perhaps while she was in the hospital still, I opened our fridge and saw the box of leftover karhi. I remember thinking then that it was the last food she'd ever cooked that would taste again, that I wish I could put it in the freezer and have it again, later.
I cooked karhi for the first time years ago, this marvel of a dish coming back to life from the past. I have not just processed my trauma, I’ve even written about it, years ago. I am done.
I make it again, trying out a new recipe, and in an Instant Pot. The pakoras are amazing, just gloriously crisp and delicious. But I make a misstep with the karhi and it is a disaster. I try to salvage it, but there's nothing I can do to fix it. I throw it all out, wishing I had saved even one of the pakoras, the perfect pakoras, instead of adding them to the karhi.
I order McDonald's for dinner. It never goes wrong.
The next day, I make karhi again, determined that I would not let this setback define my experience with karhi. This time, the pakoras were not perfect. But I use the same recipe from years ago. The karhi was glorious. Unlike the karhi I made back then, which I feel like I stirred for hours, this one came together quickly. Perhaps I am, reluctantly, a better cook now. What is it, really, I think? It's just boiled, spiced yoghurt, but my god, it's the most amazing thing when it comes together, with or without trauma.