It started with biryani.
Memorial Day weekend. A friend’s wife had gone to India a few days earlier, leaving behind an empty house that quietly volunteered itself as the venue for the evening. One friend cooked. He arrived with a pot of chicken biryani, fragrant and unhurried, sprinkled with fried onions on top and dried raisins hidden inside. Not a few raisins in one corner. Everywhere. You could not escape one in any bite, and you did not want to. The moment you bit into one, the juice would infuse into your mouth. Sweet, unexpected, perfect.
After the first bite, chicken, raisin, rice, spices all arriving at once, someone asked the inevitable question. Do you have any pickle?
Our host thought about it. Then picked up his phone and called his wife. She was 12.5 hours ahead, somewhere in the middle of her afternoon in India, and she answered. No pickle in the house. Our host reported back. We accepted this.
The biryani ran out. The friend who cooked went back to his own home for more, and returned with something better than store-bought, a homemade lime pickle. We opened it, and immediately the next question formed itself. Do you have pappadam?
Our host called his wife. She answered. No pappadam either. Another friend knew he had some at his place, went and got it.
Now we had biryani, homemade lime pickle, and pappadam. Which meant only one thing was missing. You have to be a Malayali to understand the specific joy of a boiled egg with biryani, pickle and pappadam. It is not a combination you explain. You just know.
Someone asked about eggs. Our host reached for his phone.
The table revolted. Hands went up. No. Don’t. Put it down. Find out yourself.
Our host looked genuinely lost for a moment, a man standing in his own kitchen, not knowing what it contained.
Our host found the eggs in the fridge. They were there all along.
And that was the evening. Biryani, lime pickle fetched from one home, pappadam fetched from another, eggs found after a small intervention. His kitchen contributed almost nothing to its own party. Not because he is a bad host. Just because the person who knew where everything was kept was 12.5 hours away, and he called his wife every time without hesitation. And every time, she answered.
We laughed about it that night. It was funny. It still is.
But somewhere on the way home I kept thinking about it. About how completely we can live inside a life that someone else quietly organizes around us. The pickle, the pappadam, the location of eggs in our own fridge. We don’t notice any of it until it’s gone.
We are more dependent on our spouses than we will ever admit. Most of us just haven’t had a Memorial Day party to prove it.
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