Masala Dabba

This piece was read aloud at the exhibit opening for The Wing Luke museum’s Ten Thousand Things show in March 2025. It is attached here as an audio file.

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Kadagu

Ultham paruppu

Daniya

Jeera

Milagu

Manjal

These are the flavors of my childhood and they all fit into one small stainless steel Anjali potti, or masala dabba. The sound of the little compartments inside rattling against the tin is a sure sign my mother is cooking. There is a body-knowing in that sound.

 Because it is the beginning of a ritual, one that will send the house smelling of mustard seeds that have spluttered in oil, of cumin, of coriander and the earthiness of turmeric.  

My mother has always emphasized how important it is not to be too attached to objects and to the physicality of life. A very Hindu and Buddhist philosophy thing to say.

Objects hold so much value – they are symbols, containers of memory, and storytellers of their own. That is why we are here today, celebrating this exhibit. I also like to think objects grant us greater access to ourselves, sometimes when we begin to forget our stories and who we are.

This masala dabba tethers me – among many things – to the lived memory of my culture and of the love, generosity, and richness it has given me despite my complex experience with identity. This dabba, its spices and recipes, are a thread going across generations. My grandmother’s dabba is on the open shelf of her kitchen in Chennai.

My mother’s dabba, however, ends up in the drawer beneath her stove in Bothell.

When I went to off to college some thirteen years ago, my mom prepared a little masala dabba for me too, and brought me into the fold. Sometimes I’d cook with it just to remember the rhythms of home when I was homesick even if the mustard seeds didn’t splutter just right or a burned the urad dal to black.

Nowadays, the dabba sits in the cupboard above my stove, at an easy to reach shelf. I use it more and more often as I try to make the recipes I grew up eating. I may have not valued them then, but now making them feels like one way to heal the complexity of my cultural experiences and reach back to what was real and unquestionable to me at a time when life was simpler.

Moreso, it is a way for me to take forward the traditions of my family in a way that blends with the life I am making for myself, one that is multicultural, global and full of different influences. I bring out my masala dabba to make sheppankazhangu curry (that’s taro root in Tamil for you) or for cumin – pepper rasam when I’m sick.

But I also take it out when I want to make tex-mex fajitas in the oven, or want to add a dash of Indian spice to my tofu stir fry.

Sometimes I take it out to add to something random, just because I want to smell that  familiar scent coming up into the air, a reminder that in the future when I am alone, without the women who came before me, I can recreate what it felt like to be with them simply by heating the skillet and opening this box.

The anjarai petti is more than an object to me. Opening that lid is an invitation to a ritual that long predates me, and that I am learning, also belongs to me.  And when all the world decides to tell me who I am, and what I should be, and which box I should check on a demographic survey, this little box is a way for me to come back to myself, literally. For my body is made up of these spices, used every day for eighteen years of my life.

Kadugu and ultham paruppu the essence of every meal

Are trace elements in my body

                Like Indian summers on a Marina beach

                Memorizing the pattern of my grandmother’s fingers pulling and folding the pleats of her sari

                A flame burning incense, a symphony of scent to serenade the sunrise

                And strand after strand of countless jasmine flowers pinned to my hair

Kadagu and ulutham paruppu are trace elements in my body

And when the taduka’s fragrance lifts to the air

my entire being fills with the knowledge

that I can always bring myself home.