My tam-jabi kitchen

In a country ripe with diversity, live a people who have long favoured sameness — rituals, language, caste, and class. Especially when it comes to marriage, we are advised to seek out love that feels like us. In India, endogamy is not just treated as a tradition, but as common sense. At the heart of this careful preservation lies an often-unspoken fear: that love across difference will demand compromise. We’re warned that marrying outside our community means learning to eat unfamiliar food, giving up familiar tastes, a cautionary tale that isn't just about losing flavour but about losing identity. 

Marriages may be made in heaven, but they often play out in our kitchens. Across India, kitchens are never just about sustenance, they are emotional epicentres. So what happens when you choose the unfamiliar anyway? When you are faced with new ways of cooking, serving, being and belonging? 

Food becomes both a boundary and a bridge. 

Image source: Pinterest, design by Bhavna Bhasin

I grew up in a middle-class Punjabi household in Delhi, with some food habits that migrated into kitchens beyond the Partition and some that were unique petri dish that is Delhi. Every morning would start with ਅੱਜ ਕੀ ਪਕਾਈਏ? (Ajj ki pakaiye, what should we cook today?). Punjabi spirituality has also evolved to accommodate the sentiment that nothing should be done on an empty stomach— “pehlan roti, pher bhagti” (First eat, then worship). Rice was reserved for elaborate weekend lunches with rajma or kadhi while ghee-smeared roti was the daily star around which the constellation of dal (lentil), sabzi (vegetables) and yoghurt revolved. Leftovers and fussed-over dishes were always found next morning within the folds of paranthas (stuffed indian breads). 

In 2019, on a sunny winter morning in Delhi, the mystical kind that has inspired sufi ishq (love) for centuries, I sat on ஊஞ்சல் oonjal (swing)  tasting blessings, one spoon of paalum pazhymum (a dish made with milk and banana) at a time. I ignored the age-old advice and got married to a tamizh boy. 

But I quickly became determined to cook my way into my partner’s culture, which I was certain packed a lot more knowledge and nuance, as micro-cuisines in India often do, than could be understood through the holy trinity of sambaar, idli, dosai — South Indian food for the Uninitiated Dummies. 

Over the six years of my marriage, my masala dabba has changed. Rai (mustard seeds) has taken up the spot next to jeera (cumin seeds), ajwain (carrom seeds) is no longer in the House of staples, it sits in a round jar in the House of Occasionals. A neglected bottle of LG hing (asafoetida) has crossed over the box of chaat-masala, into the drawer’s prime real estate. 

The shifts weren’t all easy - I couldn’t get myself to move Urid and chana dal from their bunks with other pulses, but slowly, I moved them to smaller jars, and recruited them into their new dual-role as part-dals and part-temperings. 

Image source: Pinterest, design by Bhavna Bhasin

Amma, my mother-in-law, while sending me voice-notes filled with recipes, would often say “kanna, it’s just like kadhi”, when I struggled to pronounce the ‘zh’ in குழம்பு Kozhambu (a tamarind-base gravy) which for some sadistic reason in English is written very differently from how it is pronounced in Tamil. But I wanted to teach my tongue to twist in new inconvenient ways, not just to taste new things, but to learn their names, their history. 

Over time, I didn’t just turn to tamilian unnavu (food) for novelty, but the idea of comfort itself began to shift. I noticed that after a long travel, I didn’t always default to khichdi. On some days I make kootu sadam (lentil and vegetable stew with rice) with a side of arsi applaam (rice crisps). 

I learned to sing the many notes in a sambar - from kalyana (marriage) sambaar to arachuvitta (freshly ground) sambar, there is a sambar for every mood and occasion. And understood that perhaps Kaveri dispute is just a proxy war between Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, fought over the real issue of whether jaggery can be added to sambar.

Layered deep in this culinary knowledge, also lay ingenious techniques — countless ways of saving time, space and effort . I learned how to stack little steel paatrams (utensils)  inside a pressure cooker, to cook dal (lentil), rice and veggies all at once. This story that is being quietly written in kitchens across India, is not one of culinary conquest, it’s one of cultural accommodation. A little space in your drawers and hearts can unlock a rich world of flavours and perspectives. 

Image source: Pinterest, design by Bhavna Bhasin

I’m not yet fluent in Tamizh or in marriage, but food has slowly become the language of our Tam-Jabi universe. To love fully, all it took was a gentle loosening of everything that had once yoked me to myself. But what does it even mean to win at love? For me, it often looks like holding on to the seemingly incongruous pieces of both of us — and the food served on the ellai (banana leaf) — eating without a spoon, and living ਨਿਰਭਉ ਨਿਰਵੈਰੁ (nirbhau, nirvair; without fear, without hate).