The Plate as a Mirror of the Sky

When you ask me
what my favorite food is,
you think you are asking about taste—
salt or sweet,
spice or silence.

But I hear a different question.

You are asking
where I come from
and what I am still searching for.

You are asking
what hunger means to me
and what I believe
can fill it.

My favorite food is simple—
steaming rice
and lentils tempered with cumin,
a spoon of ghee melting
like a small golden sunrise
across the white plain.

But that is only the surface.

Beneath the rice
there is the memory of soil—
monsoon-soaked earth
holding seeds in its dark palm,
whispering to them,
Grow.

Each grain carries
the patience of fields
that bend in the wind
without breaking.

Each lentil
is a quiet planet
circling in a small stainless steel bowl,
a constellation of protein and promise.

When I eat it,
I taste the humility of farmers
whose names I will never know,
the invisible geometry
of sunlight turning leaf into life,
the slow alchemy
of time.

Perhaps that is what it reveals about me:
I trust the ordinary.

I believe in the power
of things that do not shout.

While others crave fireworks—
layers of cream and spectacle,
fusion and flamboyance—
I return to the bowl
that steadies me.

It tells you
that I seek grounding
before glory.

That I am suspicious
of excess.

That I find poetry
in repetition—
the daily stirring of dal,
the familiar hiss
when cumin meets hot oil
and releases its ancient fragrance
into the room.

It tells you
I do not want my life
to be a buffet
where I sample everything
and digest nothing.

I want one meal
deeply understood.

I want one love
fully inhabited.

I want one sky
watched until the stars
become recognizable friends.

My favorite food is warm.
Always warm.

Cold plates
make me restless.

Perhaps this means
I am someone
who longs for warmth
in conversation,
in touch,
in the spaces between words.

Perhaps it reveals
that I am not built
for emotional winters.

I crave the steam rising—
that visible breath
between what is cooked
and what is consumed.

Steam is the soul of the meal.

It rises like a prayer
and disappears like one too.

And I watch it,
every time,
as if it carries
my unspoken gratitude
upward.

When I eat with my hands,
feeling texture—
the softness of rice,
the slight resistance of lentils—
I remember
that I belong to the earth
more than to the screen.

My fingers become roots.

My palm becomes a small field.

The act of mixing
is a quiet meditation.

I am not separate
from what I consume.

The food enters me
and becomes thought,
becomes breath,
becomes the very words
with which I will later speak of love
or grief
or galaxies.

If my favorite food were
fiery street chaat—
sharp tamarind,
crunch and chaos—
perhaps you would say
I am impulsive,
addicted to surprise,
hungry for sensation.

If it were chocolate cake,
dense and decadent,
you might imagine
a secret softness,
a nostalgia for birthdays,
a longing for celebration.

If it were bitter coffee,
dark as midnight,
you might see in me
a philosopher
who sits with shadows
and calls them teachers.

But rice and lentils—
they reveal
my devotion to balance.

Carbohydrate and protein.
Softness and spice.
Fire and water
meeting in one modest bowl.

I do not seek extremes.

I seek harmony.

And harmony, I am learning,
is not the absence of tension
but the willingness
to let opposing notes
share the same breath.

There are days
when I wonder
if my favorite food chose me.

If somewhere in the architecture
of my DNA
there is a blueprint
for cumin and turmeric,
for the fragrance of asafoetida
drifting like incense
through ancestral kitchens.

Perhaps my tongue
is a historian.

Perhaps my appetite
is a compass
pointing toward a lineage
that stretches behind me
like a river of unnamed faces.

When I lift the first morsel
to my mouth,
I am not alone.

I am accompanied
by grandmothers
who stirred pots before sunrise,
by fathers
who returned from long days
to sit cross-legged on cool floors,
by children
who learned the language of comfort
through flavor.

My favorite food reveals
that I am stitched together
by memory.

That I carry home
not as an address
but as a taste.

And yet—

As I eat,
something wider opens.

The rice, once a field,
becomes a metaphor
for the Milky Way—
countless grains
scattered across a dark plate of space.

The lentils
are planets,
each holding its own gravity,
each simmering in the broth
of existence.

The ghee—
liquid gold—
is a small sun
melting into everything,
binding the scattered
into unity.

In that moment
my plate becomes a cosmos.

I realize
that what nourishes me
is not merely sustenance
but structure—
a reminder that the universe itself
is a recipe
of balance and heat,
of timing and transformation.

Stars are born in pressure.

Spices release their fragrance
only when crushed.

Seeds split open
before they become trees.

Perhaps my preference
for simple food
reveals my acceptance
of slow growth.

I do not want to explode
like a supernova
brief and blinding.

I want to simmer.

To deepen in flavor
with time.

To become richer
not louder.

My favorite food tells you
that I believe
in the sacredness of daily rituals.

That I find meaning
in repetition—
the same meal
eaten under different skies,
on days of triumph
and days of quiet despair.

It tells you
that I understand hunger
as more than physical.

There is the hunger
for recognition,
for connection,
for transcendence.

And yet,
when the bowl is placed before me,
when the aroma rises
like an invisible hymn,
something in me softens.

The vast, unnamed ache
shrinks to human size.

I take a bite.

The world,
with all its unfinished arguments,
pauses.

In that pause
I glimpse a truth—

What I love to eat
is what I love to become.

Grounded.
Balanced.
Warm.

Rooted in soil
yet aware of stars.

A being who understands
that nourishment
is a dialogue
between body and cosmos,
between memory and possibility.

So when you ask me
about my favorite food,

know that you are asking
about the architecture of my soul.

About the way I hold the earth
and the way I hold the sky.

About the kind of fire
I allow into my life
and the kind of sweetness
I permit to linger.

My plate is a mirror.

And in its humble surface
I see not just a meal
but a map—

from grain
to galaxy,
from hunger
to wholeness.

And I eat,
slowly,
as if tasting
the universe
learning
to know itself
through me.