From pages to plates

GROWING up, I remember my mother being utterly taken in by the kitchen of the early nineties.

- VERNIKA AWAL

It was her private theatre of experimentation, stocked with everything she learnt at the famous Mrs Babbar's cooking classes in Dehradun. The said Mrs Babbar was something of a culinary oracle in the town. At some point, she had probably taught most women how to make pineapples look decorative, chicken Continental, and how to host with what felt like European flair.My mother kept maroon leather-bound diaries where she wrote her recipes in steady cursive. Sometimes she added little notes in the margins; sometimes she marked a recipe with a triumphant tick. I was fascinated by those diaries, dreaming of the day I would inherit them and make pastry that held its shape or puddings that trembled slightly when you tapped the plate. That day came quietly. The diaries now sit on my shelf and open as easily as memory itself.