Puzzle for Dinner

I started cooking “big people foods” like chicken curry, dal, fish fry, etc., during lockdown, not because I enjoyed it or it was a hobby I picked up because boredom was too boring, I did it because I had no choice. My parents would go to work, and I was the only other person who could cook a meal. Ever since then, cooking became a tool of survival, never enjoyment. It frustrates me, makes me extremely sweaty, I smell like onion and oil, and the process is too time-consuming.

Second year of college, my friend and I moved into an apartment together, and things were full of joy and whimsy the first few weeks until college crumpled us into a small box and closed the lid. We stopped cooking every day and would even skip multiple meals. I ordered food almost every single day. I almost felt like something was missing within me, and I couldn't find that piece. My body felt heavy, almost like a huge goop of slime. I had to get up I had to pick myself up to survive. So I decided to look up extremely simple recipes that would be ready in the blink of an eye. And there I found my survival kit, my rasam and potato fry. It would barely take 20 minutes to be ready, and I would load my plate up with rice, pour rasam to the brim, and take a heap of potato fry, pairing it with a tangy and spicy garlic pickle my roommates' mother would send us.

All the other recipes seemed too complicated. I looked at it as a puzzle, and every other recipe had its pieces scattered all around my brain, except this one. This piece is a thank-you note to rasam and potato fry. It was the easiest puzzle I could solve, and that puzzle was the missing piece in my life at that point. It laid down all the pieces in a neat order, sustained me, made me feel warm and gave me a pat on my back.