#3: While my potato gently weeps…
Hello and welcome to Fried Lines, a newsletter that helps me talk about my fondness for potatoes, and something that I had completely forgotten about.
It has been 3 years since I last wrote an issue - which also happened to be just the second issue that I had ever written for Fried Lines. 3 years ago at this time, I was writing this newsletter while I confined myself to a room in Delhi, and sprinkled ample amounts of sanitizers on my hands. The world has moved on since then and I have tried to do that too. But moving on often comes with a lot of ‘what ifs’ and fear of discovering new situations - something that I have always despised.
There’s an oddly unsettling feeling growing up and living in various places ever since you’ve known existing in this world. You never seem to be content with where you are, and you never seem to fully know what you exactly want in your life. For someone like me, the idea of home has always been ambiguous - I never spent a lot of time living in my hometown, never bothered to learn my supposed native language or even pause and appreciate the delicacies and food that are native to the place I am from. (Please never ask me if I like Litti Chokha! I am fond of Aaloo Chokha because, well, potatoes - but let’s just say that if you like Littis, you can very conveniently have my share of Littis as well.)
Amidst the absolute chaotic identity that I was subconsciously creating for myself, I dreamt of potatoes - lots and lots of potatoes. Potatoes fried in a piping cauldron, potatoes diced and stored in the refrigerator by dusk, only to be tossed in the pressure cooker the following morning. I would inhale the aroma of piping hot oil, run my fingers all over the crisps, and dig my spoon right in the best spot of an Aaloo Tikki. On many days, I would stand next to my mother in the kitchen as she lovingly formed little Samosa doughs. Over the past two decades, I would watch her play with the spices among different kitchens and houses, spanning several cities that we constantly moved across.
While constantly experiencing changes at every point, relying on the hope of cooking and eating potatoes became one of the only constant and familiar things in my life. Changes, obviously, mark the beginnings of unmatched joy and excitement. They come with a lot of hope to explore the unknown and gear up for something new. But they also come with fear - the fear of navigating uncharted waters, the fear of not being able to foresee the future, and needless to say, they also come with a certain degree of grief!
To me, grief has always been such a complex phenomenon, and lately, I’ve started observing people talk about it more frequently than ever - in books, in movies, and even in Instagram posts. Despite experiencing changes as frequently as I have in a single lifetime, I have interestingly never been fond of preparing myself for ‘new beginnings’. There is so much depth in understanding what I feel in my body every time I try to get ready for an unfamiliar event. It’s a certain type of anxiety induced by fear and sorrow that makes the largest beat in my heart race down my stomach. And gradually, it transforms into this feeling, almost like a person sitting next to me, that I think is called grief.
I feel it every time I end a chapter and move on to beginning a new one. I feel it when I check in my luggage and sit by the boarding gate at the airport. I feel it when I open my Uber for the first time in a new city, and navigate through locations and addresses that I have not yet known. At times, I even feel it when I am letting go of situations, people and relationships that no longer add value to my existence - and the timing of it could never be worse when it coincides with my plan of welcoming a bigger change that I am already anxious about. It’s always challenging to accommodate changes of these kinds - you know they are the best for you but it’s still hard to make space for them. And before you know it, you’re already grieving for what you think could have been and fearing what you might make of what lies ahead of you.
In the middle of sailing through such uncertainties, the joy of holding on to the idea of familiarity is unparalleled. For the longest time, I have often held on to the most familiar things in my life, especially in the middle of difficult transitions. Sometimes, it is seeing the most familiar people I know on WhatsApp screens and Snapchat filters. Sometimes, it is underlining the most relatable quotes in my favourite books. Sometimes, it is sitting back and watching reruns of the sitcoms I am watching for the 12345th time without a single worry in the world. And sometimes (or rather I should say, all the time), it is about eating a handful of potatoes.
Turning to eating and cooking potatoes is something that I often do to divert my attention from the frightening emotions uncertainties bring for me. I remember being introduced to the wonders of a Vada Pav back when I had started living in Pune, and biting into the flavours of a freshly fried Batata Vada after a long, hard day at work. I remember munching the crips of a spicy Samosa while living in my monotonous comfort zone in Delhi (in an attempt to avoid feeling uncomfortable emotions that transitions could bring for me) that I once thought I could never get out of! I even remember resorting to cooking the most experimental, and surprisingly, delicious potato curry during the pandemic in Hyderabad, when the only interaction I used to have was with a bird sitting near my balcony every day. Somehow, potatoes have always been the only familiar emotion I feel in the middle of both monotony as well as uncertainty.
Potatoes have done some unimaginable, wonderful things for me. Every day, I wake up and feel immensely grateful to potatoes and to all the people who are responsible for growing, nurturing, selling and helping them land on my plate.
It’s quite odd for a person like me who hates dealing with new changes to have also internalized the system of changing pin codes at every interval of life. As much as I obsess over living through routines, I also find myself ending and rebuilding it every time as a habit - a habit that I have been crafting ever since I was a child; a habit that has become a prominent pattern in my larger routine. It’s this habit that makes me feel the constant need to be on the run and never feel quiet, mellow emotions that bring a sense of stability with themselves. Sticking to one space doesn’t sit right with me, and every inconvenience is resolved by changing situations and spaces, as if life will automatically get better if I change enough addresses.
And, to some extent, it does - there are a lot of promises that these shifts bring for me, but often at the cost of allowing grief to lurk around.
Because how long can I even hold on to familiar spaces in life? You might ask, ‘Am I really resolving inconveniences, or simply escaping them by changing my situations?’
Do I even need to hold on to familiar feelings and things in life? And what really happens when the said familiarity - the only thing that you were counting on to maintain some sense of steadiness in your life - also starts disappearing? Simple, grief starts seeping into your routine once again!
Somehow, grief stays with me, it even tries to talk to me, as my walls of familiarity begin to tear apart. It speaks to me when I make no effort to learn a new language. It speaks to me when I constantly run between cities, being fully aware of the fact that I am partially aware of my actual roots. It speaks to me when I start everything in a new space all over again by myself. It speaks to me when I accept the fact that I may never be able to discover the best Samosa in town. It even speaks to me when I don’t see mashed potatoes floating inside the crisps of my Pani Puri. (Because have you all heard of adding boiled chickpeas to Pani Puri, by any chance?)
But it especially speaks to me when I step out on unfamiliar streets knowing that there is nobody in the city I could rely on yet, and faces from a past, familiar life are also nowhere to be found in the new life.
‘I know this is supposed to be good for me, so why does it hurt so much?’ I often ask myself. And perhaps, when I truly look inside my heart that is grieving for losing familiar people, places, routines and of course, potatoes, I truly understand that perhaps, grief is also an odd variant of love that a lot of people don’t recognise. When I truly try to untie all the layers of grief, I am finally able to see love, hiding behind one of the harder contents of despair.
Perhaps, it is my love for holding familiar spaces within myself that helps me grieve for them as I lose them. I grieve for not finding the type of potato dishes I would ideally enjoy and love. Maybe, grief shields the love that I dearly hold in my heart whenever I begin a new journey in life. And sometimes, I can see just a bit of love shining through the little cracks of grief when it trickles down my eyes.
If grief is about being constantly on your toes and not knowing what your idea of home is, it is also about continuing the quest until you truly understand what the meaning of home is to you. If grief is about letting go of familiar people that you want to count on, it is also about holding on to the good memories while making space for your anger as you move past them, forging newer, healthier relationships. If grief is about moving away from your friends, it is also about falling back on their support (no matter the distance) in a new territory. If grief is about not being able to find tasty Vada Pavs in a new city, it is also about smacking your lips at the most delicious concoction of potatoes and chillies stuck between the layers of your Ghee Dosa. If grief is about forgetting to write your usual love letters to potatoes, it is also about coming back and trying to revive them. If grief is about ending a past life, it is also about beginning a new life, knowing that you had dreamt of it and that you deserve all of it. If grief is anything, it’s a lot of love that you hold for yourself in your heart - love that finally marks the end of a life that is no longer meant for you, and works hard on building safe spaces for you and your dreams that you know will make you happy one day.
If watching reruns of the all-time stable sitcoms in my life has taught me anything, it’s about exclaiming ‘Now number five!’ as I sing ‘Tell me why’, but also about Vision asking Wanda - ‘What is grief, if not love persevering?’
Never in my life did I think that I'd learn so much from a brief interaction between two fictional characters on a TV screen. But here I am, using it to understand the love I hold for myself as well as trusting myself enough to discover new possibilities of potatoes and relationships within new geographical locations.
I was drowning in familiar routines and rituals for years hoping they would protect me from feeling emotions of fear until I started trusting myself. A few months ago, when I was moving to a new city, someone asked me what changed that helped me make this decision. I simply told them that it was trust that made me shift my mindset towards change. The moment I started trusting myself as well as people and spaces outside my comfort zone, the fear of discovering uncertainties started getting smaller. Maybe trust makes fear look smaller?
There is still a lot to learn about the different range of emotions I feel as I move on to a new system that is crucial for my growth while simultaneously holding spaces for responsibilities and emotions from the past that are here to stay. But biting into a plate full of Masala Dosa stuffed with greasy potatoes or scarfing down a salty bag of french fries help me find stability and happiness amidst the perpetual chaos.
Knowing that you are capable of handling whatever life throws at you and that things are eventually meant to be great is a powerful feeling. Knowing that you have the potential of changing your ‘what if it doesn’t work out’ statements to ‘if it doesn’t work out, I’ll think of something else’ is enough to help you go about your day, navigating changes one potato at a time. I guess! I mean, at least that’s what I think!
If you are also trying to understand a similar situation in your life or embracing new changes, I am sure you are already handling it well (way better than me, I believe). And if not, know that there are just enough potatoes and love in the world that can make things easier and happier for you within no time.
For now, here’s a love note to potatoes by @appetite.life on Instagram that always makes my day, and I hope it does the same for you.
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