The multiverse of Meenakshi Ammal’s brinjal

I enjoy cooking, and I enjoy science fiction, and I've realised there is a connection between the two. Both immerse you in an alternate world—between flame and flavour, between code and consciousness.

- SAMAR HALARNKAR

Let me round up some notable movies about multiple realities. The 1999 movie, The Thirteenth Floor, was about scientists creating the ability to plug themselves into 1937, getting their highs as they crossed the blurry lines between awareness and algorithm. That same year, we saw the first Matrix movie, questioning what was real and what was fake as people lived in a fantastical world controlled by machines. In 2011, Another Earth used parallel realities to explore redemption and possibility. In 2013, Comet examined the confusion of meeting alternate selves after a comet splits the timelines of life.

The timeline of my life is split, with my alternate reality emerging not from machines or comets but cooking. To those who do not cook, it is hard to explain how slicing, sautéing, broiling, baking, roasting—and thinking of all of these—creates multiverses in life. Cooking, like science fiction, is an act of imagination—a portal to other possibilities.