Taste of Becoming

An individual creates their legacy through the food. It is their history and the various ways in which they pass it on to others.

- HARSH ADITYA

Have I ever truly eaten for myself?

It’s a question I have scribbled at the back of my journals since I was 14. I treat it like a promise—one I hope to fulfil someday.

When I look back to my childhood, I see my amma on a summer afternoon. She hums under her breath, her bangles jingle to that tune. I walk and hide behind the curtain, watching her silently. “Rice is what makes a home,” she says to me as she washes rice until the water runs clean. That sentence stuck to me like my fate. It made me wonder the ways in which I would build my home. It doesn’t matter if there’s anything else, there should always be rice.

Two decades later I was making my home in a different country when I realised my relationship with food had changed. I had forgotten my appetite. There was an uneasy rhythm between my body and myself. I “forgot” to eat. Sometimes for days. My disconnect with food was inherited. Colonisation fractured and controlled the hunger of my ancestors, the impact of which lingers on my life like a curse. The questions I'd learnt by rote echoed in my ears—chew your food properly! What to hurry? Why so much food? Why so little? Have more! Eat slowly. Don't drink water between! Take a smaller plate.