Salt. Taste. Gag. Repeat.

As I learned to make more food for me and the people I love, salt remained the treacherous seasoning I could never master.

“How much ever you think is necessary.”

This is always the answer to, “How much salt should I put in?” in my household. It’s never a specifically defined amount. Never an amount I could attribute to a standard cooking scale because why would my mother do that? She never did. 

So, when I continue to stare at the fragrant spiced pot of Tawa Pulao, wafting sodium-less aromas, I question my entire existence. 

I think of how I see the world as a large constitution filled with unwritten rules and regulations. There are certain expectations of us as humans, and we must follow them accordingly. 

For example, in my household, you should always put the shoes back on the rack when you come home, wipe down the countertops, sweep the floor after you’re done cooking and eating, and offer your bed to the guest, even if that means sleeping on a mattress on the floor. 

Considering that I had attended religious gatherings all my life, I was accustomed to following a code of conduct that would make me an upstanding citizen among my peers. So, how dare there be no rule to adding salt to food?

“It is burning! Put salt fast and mix it,” my mother exclaims, looking over. I snap out of my mini dilemma and scramble to make things right. 

I drop my fingers in the bottle of salt, grab a pinch, and sprinkle it over a four-serving meal. Satisfied that I look like a professional chef while doing it, I give it a good mix before taking it off the stove to serve. 

She took one bite, thought for a moment and sprinkled double the amount I put in. If my eyes were not bugging out then, they did when she murmured, “Still not enough,” to herself and added more. She then became the designated salt-putter when I helped cook. It was the brazen confidence with which she did it, even when she got it wrong. 

She didn’t need a manual or a blueprint to know she was following a specific set of rules. How do people go through life without systematically laying out the process to make sure their affairs are in order? You need to plan for things and only when you are organized do they work out. 

With this attitude, I got my bachelor’s degree, worked for a year and found a graduate school I wanted to go to. Things were going exactly the way I planned. The feeling of being in control was still strong. The only thing that stood in my path? Salt. But it’s not like I could take my mom with me to Chicago. 

This is where I began the research process. My kitchen was the field, my mother the research subject and a trial-and-error-based research method. 

“That’s when I should put tomatoes?”

“What if I don’t have onions? Can I just use something else?”

“So, how much salt should I put?” This time I ask seriously, hoping to get a serious answer. She looks at me knowingly, cracks a cheeky smile, and says, “How much ever you think is necessary.” The bane of my existence personified. I rolled my eyes, laughed and eyeballed the amount of salt crystals leaving my fingers, praying it would be right. 

It was at this time that I realized that knowing how to cook and actually cooking are two different things. When I made my first meal here, I was taken back to the salt conversation because I had to figure it out from scratch. Salt, taste, gag, repeat. No one to tell this to, no one to ask to help me do this. It was emotionally isolating. 

The fact that crying releases salty tears is a cruel joke I didn’t think of until I tasted it. They could have salted enough meals. How much is enough? How much can you control? Can someone just hand me a rulebook? See, salt is elusive. Too little and you want to plant your food back in the soil, but too much and you think this is what the glutton part of Dante’s circles of hell must feel like.

And everything is new here, it is all a massive unknown stimulus and this time, I have no salt-putters to help me organize. No one tells you what to do if your IKEA furniture gets stolen, or the train stops for an indefinite time and you get to work an hour late.

Situations came at me, and I wondered why the intensely planned layout of my life wasn’t working. Why must I think of what is necessary all the time? Why is it all in the air? Why is it only “how much ever you think is necessary”?

I could account for every variable before. Measure my responses and reactions with utmost precision. I do the same now, only to be gobsmacked. When there is a prop to hold you up, being in control feels easy. I only knew how to live and never actually lived. I had turned the grand design of my life into a series of inputs and outputs. 

I had left no room for evolution because there was no room to taste. If this meal wasn’t salted well, it was now an indication of how I failed at living. It took me a while to reconcile that my worthiness cannot be reduced to a handful of unfortunate cooking mishaps. Yes, salt is important, but the vegetables are cooked well, the other spices are beautifully aromatic and overall, I could make this a staple in my roster of meals. 

It never occurred to me that getting one thing wrong didn’t mean it was unfixable. It was one meal in the countless that would come. I could enjoy it with people or sigh in enjoyment by myself. But until I actually did it, until I actually picked up the salt shaker, it would never happen. I had to trust that when the time came, I would know how much to put. I would know how much is necessary. 

You can only salt well when you salt enough. You can only live well when you live enough.