My school notebooks were never pristine. While others had neat plastic covers and ruled margins with red lines intact, mine had turmeric smudges by page five and an unmistakable oil fingerprint by the middle of chapter two. Every masala stain was accidental, but each one carried a story—of rushed mornings, unfinished breakfasts, and a mother’s roti handed to me just as I grabbed my bag and ran.
The stains always came early in the semester. Sometimes it was sambar from a lunchbox that tilted just wrong. Sometimes it was the result of balancing my notebook too close to the kitchen counter while doing homework and eating upma at the same time. And sometimes—on the best days—it was from pressing a warm paratha between the pages of a book I’d been pretending to read, only to find a faint trace of achaar oil decorating the corner hours later.
The Notebook Was Never Just a Notebook
It was a diary of mornings. Of food packed in haste and love. Of scribbled last-minute answers next to stains that smelled faintly of garlic. I once turned in a math assignment with a full jeera imprint on it—clearly from my hand, freshly dipped in dal, that had grazed the margin of the page. The teacher didn’t comment. She just gave me a look that said, “This is very much on brand for you.”
And it wasn’t just school. Even my tuition notes, exam prep sheets, and library handouts bore evidence of my mealtimes. A water-ring from a steel glass of nimbu pani. A drop of chutney that somehow found its way into a page on the Mughal Empire. These weren’t accidents. They were my version of multitasking. They were memory marks.
Food Wasn’t Separate from Study
In our house, the dining table was also the homework table. The place where textbooks lived side by side with lunchboxes. Where someone would be preparing rotis while someone else wrote essays. You’d be solving science questions while the pressure cooker hissed in the background. And often, before you knew it, a bit of curry had made its way onto your worksheet.
Even now, when I open old notebooks, the pages tell me more than just what I was learning—they tell me what we were eating. The rust-colored thumbprint on the poetry chapter? That was from Sunday rajma. The faint green smear on the geography map? Mint chutney. The soft oily shadow on the first page of my Hindi test prep? That, without doubt, was puri aloo from exam day breakfast.
My Margins Were Cooked Into
Some people write motivational quotes in the margins. I had second-hand masala. And if you looked closely, you could almost smell the kind of day I was having. A little haldi meant mom was in a hurry. A streak of ghee meant someone cared enough to feed me while I was memorizing grammar rules. And a papad crumb tucked into the spine of a workbook? That meant I’d done my homework at the kitchen counter during dinnertime.
Now, I Miss Those Pages
These days, I take notes on a laptop. Everything is clean. Tidy. Tasteless. Nothing bleeds through the screen. No oil stains. No smells. No trace of a meal eaten in a rush while trying to finish homework. I miss those pages—creased, messy, and honest. They were proof that life was never compartmentalized in our house. Food, study, chores, and chaos happened together. On the same table. Often at the same time.
Those masala stains? They weren’t carelessness. They were culture. They were care. They were notes written not just in ink, but in turmeric, oil, and the kind of love that doesn’t always stay inside the lunchbox.
Born in Mumbai, now stir-frying feelings in Texas. Writes about food, memory, and the messy magic in between — mostly to stay hungry, sometimes just to stay sane.
Born in Mumbai, now stir-frying feelings in Texas. Writes about food, memory, and the messy magic in between — mostly to stay hungry, sometimes just to stay sane.
