"An year in Delhi told through all the food we’ve eaten."
The smoke from your cigarette escapes wind and shifts a little closer as you cradle the lukewarm cup of chai in one hand and scroll through your phone with the other. My coffee dusted with cadbury’s hot chocolate powder is still warm and will burn the tip of my tongue. I drink it anyway.
‘I love you. I want us both to eat well’*. Sticky cheap noodles as rain seeps through my socks leaving a squish squish sound whenever I walk, spoons breaking the crust of the Sha-phaley with a chutney spicy enough that i know it will hurt as steam hurries and dashes for an exit, paranthas that feel just like home but never as filling and chai, always chai because you don’t drink coffee. We’re asians you say, we’re made for chai, not coffee.
We sit with rice and a too wet dal that is lost in itself trying to decipher what it is and what it once had been. Eating, now, is also a job for other people. You say sixty rupees is too much to spend on a scrunchie but it's big and white like the fluff of marshmallows and keeps my hair out of the way as we slurp on thick broths of thenthuk. There is an hour for dumplings and an hour for chaat, in between there is only hunger that accompanies youth as we roam through these streets where rats share the same plate as us, nibbling the after crumbs we leave behind.
It's cold, we drink chai. You fall sick, we get soup.I’m sad today, we nibble on slightly dry cakes, the sun unforgiving so we drink cola and devour orange bars in between brain freeze and sticky fingers, you’re angry so you smoke more cigarettes than the water you drink. It’s as simple as this, more often than not, we sit in under-watered lawns, the sun butter yellow like the light of an old microwave, we eat, we talk. I love you, I want us both to eat well.
*line take from ‘Our Beautiful Life When It’s Filled with Shrieks” by Christopher Citro
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