The six days spent with my sister, who recently came to visit the remote part of Italy where I live, helped me make sense of my surroundings through the prism of where I come from.
A view of the town of Kaltern, also known as Caldaro, in the South Tyrol region of northern Italy. Pic/Rosalyn D’Mello
As I write this dispatch, my dear sister has already left South Tyrol. She is currently on a train to Rome. Last night, my heart fluttered as I counted the seconds to our parting, unsure of when we would see each other again. I was afraid I would get overly emotional, but thanks to the quality of the time we spent together, I was more teary-eyed than sobby. I couldn’t have asked for more. She managed to take time off from her hectic work life to come to the remote part of Italy where I lived. We had a lot of making up to do, and I was afraid six days wouldn’t be enough. It wasn’t, but her being here alone and my light work schedule gave us the opportunity to catch up. When it was time for us to say goodbye, I felt excited about her discovering Rome on her own, then returning to her lovely partner and fulfilling job. She could report to our parents that I was doing fine, her witness serving as first-hand testimony, perhaps alleviating their anxiety about me to some degree. Because my relationship with her is perhaps my oldest association with anyone beyond my parents, her being here, her participating in my everyday felt like a blessing.
Beyond being my blood relation and my younger sibling, my sister has come to represent all the many worlds I have always known — of vada pav and sugarcane juice and kheema pav and choir rehearsals and social organising and train travel while doing the mid-day crossword and sharing autos at Vidyavihar station and pani puri and our Goa rituals at Sernabatim beach and learning to ride scooters and traipsing along the coastal state as she performed as a musician and I tagged along as a writer and not to forget my life in Delhi, from the early days at JNU until 2020, when I lived in Kailash Hills, not to forget my many loves, my heartbreaks, my crushes, my desires, my hospital stays, my recoveries. She’s been a constant in my life, not only a witness but an active participant, someone who actively nourishes my soul. Her visit felt like a bridging of realms.
This is what the joy of having family visit entails, I suspect — perpetuating new memories within a space that is familiar for one of the two parties involved; re-presencing place, through conversations that are sparked by the specificities of the location. Sharing with her what I have come to learn of the place helped me to make sense of where I live through the prism of where I come from. Cooking for her and with her or sharing meals together in restaurants, felt like a vital component of our time together. On Monday, for instance, we both got around to preparing a meal for my in-laws. My partner had bought half a kilo of prawns with the shell on a month ago but forgot to freeze them in batches. We couldn’t eat 22 prawns between the two of us, so we had strategised that we would cook a large meal when my sister got here. It occurred to me that I hadn’t cooked a meal for my in-laws in years. My sister and I spent the morning together, I took her to see the Mendel Pass so we could take the funicular and soak in the view of the Alps and the Dolomites from 1200 metres. We then walked from the funicular station towards Kaltern and came upon a charming restaurant at a wine estate. I proposed lunch there because the menu involved tartar, which I really wanted her to sample. We ended up eating a phenomenal herb risotto, with a local fish that was marinated in lemon, orange, juniper berries and pinot noir from the wine estate. When we returned home, I put together some spices and headed over to my in-laws’ apartment.
Naturally, cooking while taking care of an almost four-month-old baby is unpredictable. To manage my anxieties and not overwhelm my sister, I kept the menu simple. We would fry the prawns, which we would eat with a saffron pulao and a beetroot thoran. My sister marinated the prawns with dhania, jeera and haldi powder, vinegar and finely chopped garlic and ginger. My tendency is to add salt, but she told me she learned it’s better to keep that as a final step just before the prawns are to be fried. When I realised I couldn’t place the pan I used to cook the rice in the oven to finish off the pulao, she suggested I leave it on the stove, with the lid on, on a low heat. ‘Don’t open it until we’re ready to eat,’ she instructed. When she saw me adding the mustard, jeera and curry leaf at the beginning for the thoran instead of potentially making a tadka, I told her that the end result was almost the same, and this technique worked better on these stoves.
The meal was fantastic. The prawns got swiped. Only the chilli remained of the thoran, and every last grain of the pulao was eaten. We served my in-laws the home-made bebinca my mother had sent, heating it in the oven for five minutes before serving. This Goan dessert felt like a revelation to them, just like the Hofstätter Sauvignon Blanc tasted to her like a miracle.
My sister and I began cooking together when we were perhaps five or six years old. Next week, I turn 40, and being in the kitchen with her felt like the best birthday present ever. Suddenly, Mumbai and Tramin are no longer unbearably distant from each other.
Deliberating on the life and times of every woman, Rosalyn D’Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She posts @rosad1985 on Instagram
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The views expressed in this column are the individual’s and don’t represent those of the paper.
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