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How My Tiny Kitchen Saved My Soul
When my work visa ran out, I was lost and angry — until I found myself in curry and sticky rice
Anil and I bonded in London over a mutual aversion to mushy peas. “No wonder they colonized India,” he joked, winning me over immediately. On one of our earliest dates, we made samosas from scratch, using puff pastry for the crust with disastrous consequences. I fell in love when he made the perfect chana masala a few dinners later. This Canadian brown man recreated home for me.
A year later, our relationship wended its way to New York, and the following summer I moved into Anil’s tiny Brooklyn apartment. It was all terribly romantic. My books found new homes on his bookcases; his Oxford shirts hung by my Levi’s. Our bedroom faced the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, while the living room and kitchen overlooked a backyard, with a magnolia tree that burst into buttery, radish-like pink-and-white flowers. I had just graduated and had a one-year work visa. I was a real adult with a serious relationship and a job, using my human rights legal training as a researcher for a feminist anti-war organization.
Each morning, we walked to the subway together, planning happy hour and picking restaurants for dinner. Cooking was leisurely, relegated to the weekends or when we had people over. We…
