After my father died, I began cooking for my mother the same dishes she once made for him

Then everything changed.

On December 2, 2017, the day of our new house’s griha pravesh, my father died. A heart attack. Sudden. He was 59. I was in Gurgaon, caught in traffic, unable to reach Durgapur in time. By the time I arrived, he had already passed. Our world crumbled like the sandesh she used to press into moulds.

She never moved into the new home he built with love. She left Durgapur, reluctantly, and came to live with me in Gurgaon. Everything here was alien to her. The tomatoes were tasteless. The mustard oil too pungent. The language, the light, the tempo of the city—nothing felt like home. She was 50 and grieving, having lost both her partner and her sense of place.

In the beginning, I didn’t know how to care for her.

So, I cooked.

At first, awkwardly. I would text her from the kitchen for instructions. What’s the ratio of ginger to garlic? Do I add the potatoes before or after the mutton? Slowly, it became instinct. And slowly, something shifted.

I began revisiting our Sunday menus. Her handwritten recipes, oil-stained and folded, became my guide. I hunted for the same brand of mustard oil or ghee she once used. I searched specialty stores for Gobindobhog rice in Gurgaon. I ground my own spices. My kitchen became a bridge.

When I made pathar jhol for the first time in Gurgaon, my mother watched silently. Then she said, “It smells like your Baba.” Later that night, she took a second helping. I didn’t cry in front of her, but I wept in the bathroom.

Cooking for my mother became my way of holding her. Reassuring her that the rituals hadn’t died with him. That memory can be kept alive not just through photographs or anniversaries, but through begun bhaja on a steel plate, through mustard seeds sputtering in hot oil.

Now, eight years since he left, I cook almost every weekend. Not because I must, but because it returns me to something sacred. My mother, once the orchestrator of our sensory world, now sits in the sun-drenched kitchen corner, watching. Occasionally correcting. Mostly remembering. Sometimes, we cook together. Other times, she simply eats what I make and smiles a smile that feels like home.