I was the pickiest eater as a kid. Compounded by the fact that I was a first-generation Indian American and I was striving to assimilate, I despised almost everything about Indian food. The unfortunate truth is Indian culture wasn’t in vogue in the ’90s, so things like henna, yoga, turmeric, and the “smelly” foods we ate at home weren’t yet desirable—they hadn’t been “discovered” by white people, you could say. So, while my mom, the proverbial Desi aunty, served up glops of food she’d labored for hours to make, recalling oral recipes passed down for generations, I just wanted “regular” American food like pizza or spaghetti. My mom cooked these traditional dishes not only because they were the only foods she had ever known to eat and cook, but also, as she reminded every time I turned my nose up at yet another one of her elaborate meals, “We’re Indian! What else are we going to eat?!” But I was a kid constantly code-switching between my Indian and American identities, and all I wanted to eat was food whose every bite wasn’t also laden by the burden of upholding my Gujarati Indian culture.
In 2003, UNESCO, the cultural arm of the United Nations, adopted the Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage. Since then, the convention has added the culture of making Ukrainian borscht, Turkish coffee, and Korean kimchi to the list of traditions that it believes are “practices, representations, expressions, knowledge and know-how, transmitted from generation to generation within communities, created and transformed continuously by them, depending on the environment and their interaction with nature and history,” according to the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage report. In doing so, UNESCO recognized the major role food plays in the preservation of a people’s cultural identity and importantly, the integral role of women in that practice, adding they “hold a special place in the transmission of intangible heritage and have knowledge that contributes to their empowerment and to revenue generation.”
This can be especially true for immigrant women, like my mom, for whom traditional food can sometimes be the last unbroken link to a homeland far away. Because while language, dress and social behaviors can be among the first to assimilate to the norms in a new country, what’s cooked at home and how it’s cooked can remain untouched for generations through careful safeguarding. This is the contribution that our moms and aunties have made across the South Asian diaspora.
While Indian restaurants certainly grew in popularity in the ‘80s and ‘90s, regional cuisine was not readily available outside the home—especially for people like my family who lived in small towns across America. From the masala chais they brewed every morning to the multiple shaaks, or sabzis (a vegetable stir-fry often eaten with roti), they served fresh every night, and all of it in between, we can thank the Desi aunties for not only protecting but also helping to proliferate our traditions across the diaspora.
It took me years of growing up (and having the opportunity to eat lots of non-Indian food in college and after), to really understand that my mom’s commitment to cooking traditional Gujarati and other Indian foods was an act of conservation. She, and the aunties of our community—who similarly cooked multiple, full-course Indian meals every day—have done much more than feed their families. They have carried the weight of preserving our quickly disappearing cultures through trial and tribulation. In schools and at work, their families learn and perfect their English. In their free time, they partake in activities like watching American sports and movies and listening to American music. But at home, our moms and aunties root us back to our heritage through every bite of a freshly made roti.
Of course, in order for a culture to live on, the next generation must be willing and able to learn traditional knowledge and practices. Given my early distaste for Indian food, my mom had lost all hope for me. But she never failed to remind me that while I may not care to eat Indian food, one day I’d marry an Indian man who would ask for it. And then what would I make? She’d challenge me. Unsurprisingly, this particular tactic didn’t exactly pique my interest in the art of cooking Indian food. But as it turned out, I did marry an Indian man whose love for Indian food was so exuberant, it could convince even the pickiest eater they were missing out on the world’s greatest food. (And it worked for me.)
I can’t say honestly I had some great awakening in college, when I heard many-a-college-kid lament about missing their moms’ home cooking after one-too-many Chipotle bowls. But I certainly began to appreciate the labor that went into making Indian food, when my mom or kaki (my paternal aunt), who lived in the same city where I was going to college, sent me back to the dorms with yogurt containers full of daal, shaak, and steamed rice. It was only after college, when I moved out-of-state to New York City, that I really had to fend for myself. I became increasingly passionate about sustainability and DIY-ing, turning my small outdoor space into a greenscape, where I grew hot chilies, basil, mint and flowers. It was my then-boyfriend’s enthusiasm for cooking his family’s traditional Maharashtrian foods that made me realize it was not only doable, but also a rite of passage and privilege to carry on the torch.
Over the next few years, I made a commitment into learning the craft. Slowly, I began to make simple shaaks at home in my tiny studio apartment, relishing in every bite and marveling in my ability to make my mom’s food that often felt so unapproachable growing up. The day came when I asked my mom to help me fill my own masala dabba. The stainless steel container—every Desi aunty’s trusty toolkit—is a known staple in every Indian pantry. It’s stocked full of spices that make the foundation of almost every dish. My mom’s dabba contained individual containers of whole cumin seeds, black mustard seeds, cumin powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder and garam masala. I had been dabbling in learning to make Indian food, using spices I brought back in plastic baggies. But stocking my own masala dabba felt, for the lack of a better word, grown-up. It felt, in some ways, like I was grabbing the baton. It was my leg of the race, and the responsibility to carry on the work of everyone before me was now mine.
I routinely began to make fresh, hot rotis multiple times a week, never losing an opportunity to squeal with glee every time one puffed up fully. I learned how to culture my own yogurt. I started to strain mango pulp by hand—the traditional way. I stocked my freezer with homemade ginger-garlic paste and chili paste. Eventually, I was video-calling my mom every other day to ask her for one recipe or another or giving her updates on how my Indian veggies were growing in my garden. In her time, I would have learned from her by playing her shadow in the kitchen. Now, we had to settle for the rear-facing camera so she could see what I was doing.
“It’s just a little of this and a pinch of that. Just eyeball it!” She’d say as if it was the most common sense thing in the world. The impreciseness of cooking Indian food often frustrated me at first. But I realized over time that it was what made every meal feel like art. No two dishes ever came out exactly the same, but it was through leaning on that sensorial intuition that I really began to commit my mom’s recipes to memory. Like when you have to get lost in a new city to really learn your way around, I finally began to understand why Desi aunties cook the way they do and why oral recipes have stood the test of time, travel and assimilation.
These days, those who knew me as a kid often laugh with surprise that I’ve become such an “aunty,” in the kitchen. My mom, herself, leans on store bought conveniences like yogurt, but I prefer to put in the work to make my own. Although roti-making is a standard in our home, no fully-puffed roti goes uncelebrated. Because I have a deep appreciation for the dedication it takes to the long road and the payoff for doing so. As my husband and I look forward to passing on traditional Gujarati and Maharashtrian recipes to our son one day, I know that documenting them will be important. But even more meaningful will be how we instill love and respect for our foods, how they help us trace our heritage back to our ancestors’ homelands, and the perseverance of those stalwart aunties, who couldn’t sleep unless and until their families ate a hot, homemade meal.