One of my fondest memories of school in Delhi is of the lunches that we brought from our homes in tiffin-carriers. My tiffin-carrier used to dangle from the handlebars of my bicycle as I rode to school every morning, my pigtails flying behind me. The smells from it kept me going as I dodged between buses and, later, as I struggled with algebra. When the lunch bell finally set us free, my friends and I met under a shady tree if it was summer, or on a1 sunny verandah if it was winter. My mouth used to water even 5 before we opened our tiffin-carriers. All my friends were of different faiths and originally came from different regions of the country. Even though we were all Indian, we had hardly any food traditions in common. Eating always filled us with a sense of adventure because we never knew what the others would bring.
My friend from the Punjab was a Sikh. She often brought large round bread parathas, made with wheat from her family farm. They were sometimes stuffed with pomegranate seeds and sometimes with cauliflower. Another friend was a Muslim from Uttar Pradesh. She used to bring beef cooked with spinach, deliciously flavored with chillies, cardamom and cloves. Another member of the group was a Jain from Gujerat. Jains are vegetarians and she brought the most delicious pancakes, pooras, made from vegetables. One of us came from Kashmir, Indian’s northernmost state. She told us exciting stories about tobogganing - the rest of us had never seen snow. She used to unpack mushrooms cooked with tomatoes and peas and flavored with spices. We had a South Indian friend too, a Syrian Christian from Kerala. She often brought idlis, slightly sour, steamed rice cakes that we ate with sambar, a pulse and fresh vegetable stew. I, a Delhi Hindu, tried to dazzle my friends with quail and partridge which my father shot and which our cook prepared with onions, ginger, cinnamon, black pepper and yogurt.