The Kitchen Was Always for Anyone Who Loves Food.

Cooking is not a gender. It is not a chore assigned to one half of a household while the other waits at the table. It is part hobby, part therapy, part love language, part the specific joy of eating something that tastes exactly the way you wanted it to. I cook for myself. I cook for my family when I can. And honestly, the meal I look forward to most is the one I did not make but the one that comes out of my parents’ kitchen.

My dad makes the most incredible chapatti. Crunchy at the edges, soft in the middle. He makes an amazing dal tadka better than any restaurant that is perfectly spiced. And there is a Rajasthani dish he makes called kheech a thick, preparation made from wheat flour that I wait for every winter. He makes suji ka halwa too, the kind you eat directly from the pan when nobody is watching.

My mom is the creative one. The one who makes south Indian food on a Tuesday for no reason, idli and chutney so perfectly balanced. The one whose malai kofta and kaju curry are the dishes that guests request specifically. The chole and rajma that taste like they have been cooking since morning because they have. And then she also makes pizza. And burgers. And grilled sandwiches. Chaat too that has exactly the right amount of tang and crunch.

We are a family that likes to eat. And more than eating, we like making. We go out, of course, but there is a particular satisfaction in a homemade meal that no restaurant ever fully replaces.

I came to cooking properly during COVID. I was in eleventh standard, at home, and suddenly every day had hours in it that needed to be filled with something. I started where everyone starts when they are nervous and also hungry, tea, Maggi, popcorn. I started paying attention. Watching my mom more carefully. Understanding the logic of what she was doing And when I started as day scholar at college with pockets of free time, I started experimenting on my own.

I started with what interested me, Chinese food, manchurian, noodles, pasta, macaroni, pizza. I would look up a recipe, modify it immediately based on what I thought better. Sometimes it was exactly right. Sometimes it needed more spice or less time or a completely different approach.

There is something about cooking on a cold monsoon afternoon or when the weather has that particular winter sharpness. Steam from a pot, the smell of something frying, the sound of onions hitting a pan in that kind of weather, those things feel like more than cooking.

I helped my mom wherever I could. Peeling, stirring, tasting, adjusting. Learning not from a recipe but from being in the same kitchen as someone who has been doing it for years and knows the difference between cooked and almost-right by smell alone. That is the kind of cooking education nobody can give you in text.

Cooking taught me patience. It taught me that the process matters as much as the outcome. It is not therapy in the clinical sense. But there is something about being busy with something tactile and sensory, something where the result is edible and warm and yours. After a difficult day, a study session that went nowhere, a week that felt too long, walking into a kitchen and making something is a specific kind of resets the mood.