I stumbled upon a piece of Joy Harjo where she writes, “The world begins at a kitchen table, no matter what we must eat to live.” and this made me ponder upon two things –
One, the world turns to food when it’s cracking open or being brought together.
You know, how the highest form of showing love is cooking a meal for someone because you care enough for them to eat what was made by you, to have a part of you in them, metaphorically.
Trying to get their morning toast or coffee right, doing your best over and over just to make that face smile as bright as you can, because it matters. The quality of toast or the coffee matters.
You also stop eating when something goes wrong and when life seems to be falling apart since it’s the easiest thing to do.
You don’t go back to making the coffee or that toast ever again once the person leaves.
It works both ways, coming together and breaking apart.
Two, kitchen will always be that space in every home where a new story is born or an old one is washed away with the lather in the basin.
I remember telling Ma about my first crush while she was grinding peanuts for the chutney we would take along with idlis in our tiffin boxes to school. She had smiled and the 12 year old me who anticipated different reaction came to believe that kitchen is a safe place for confessions.
I remember shifting to our new home and sitting for hours together on the kitchen slab, looking across the window at the glittering night life of this area we were trying to call home.
I remember sharing my first mess up as an adult while all of us were casually standing in the kitchen laughing about something silly, it was just easier there.

You see how when there’s nobody in the house except for two people, they always end up eating on the kitchen table which is perhaps the most important room in the house, the room where things take their shape to begin and end.

In retrospect, you’ll always find yourself holding some relationships closer than others because there’s food involved, closest if it was cooked together even though the other person in question might be the farthest to you now.

I have grown up listening to how your heart should be full and your stomach happy, and it’s symbolic of how one place determines a lot of things in your life.

It’ll always be the first place you enter and the last place you leave, it’ll always be the best association to domestic peace, it’ll always carry love; hard or soft, irrespective.