Every Indian kitchen has a rogue lid. A lone ranger. A top with no bottom. A circular, dented piece of metal that refuses to retire because someone, someday, might find its matching dabba. We had one too. It sat in the second drawer, wedged awkwardly between a steel lemon squeezer and a grater with a permanent turmeric stain. It didn’t belong. And yet, it never left. It was the mystery lid no one could match.
No one remembered where it came from. It didn’t fit any of our current containers. Too small for the rice dabba. Too loose for the pickle jar. Too warped for the pressure cooker. But there it was, clanging every time someone opened the drawer, like it wanted to be picked, used, remembered. It had that uneven lip on one side, the kind that suggested it had once been pried off something mid-boil. The handle was slightly off-center. The steel? A bit darker, older, heavier. It had history—just not one anyone could confirm.
The Lid That Lingered
My mother refused to throw it away. “Lid kisi ka toh hoga,” she’d say, with the logic only mothers have when defending objects that the rest of us would quietly chuck. And so, it stayed. Every few months, during kitchen cleaning sprees or Diwali-level reorganizations, someone would try to sneak it into the discard pile. And every time, it would return—back in the drawer, like a stubborn ghost who knew its name was still on the lease.
We tried using it. It never sat flush on any pot. It wobbled on kadais. It slid off milk pans. Once, my aunt tried to balance it over boiling tea—it rattled, hissed, and flipped clean off, like it was offended. And still, we kept it. Sometimes out of nostalgia. Sometimes out of pure confusion. But mostly because it had crossed over into that sentimental territory of “things that are part of the family, whether useful or not.”
Not a Lid. A Legend.
It became an inside joke. “Use the mystery lid,” someone would say when a pot was already covered. We gave it nicknames: UFO, Captain Top, The Survivor. When relatives came over and spotted it, they’d point and laugh: “Yeh toh har ghar mein hota hai.” Turns out, we weren’t special. Everyone had their version of the lid. Some rusted. Some chipped. All unmatched. All unmovable.
The mystery lid started to feel less like an orphan and more like an archivist. It had seen chutneys being ground before the mixer came into our lives. It had covered bowls during power cuts. It had probably traveled during house shifts, wedding catering, maybe even train journeys. Maybe it belonged to a dabba we gave away. Or a vessel that cracked and got tossed, but the lid, being less broken, was spared. It had survived the purge. It had earned its drawer space.
What We Keep, What We Let Go
Years later, when I moved out and started my own kitchen in a one-bedroom flat with a lot of ambition and very little storage, I bought matching containers. Clean, symmetrical, stackable. No mystery lids. No surprises. And still, I missed that clanging mess of a drawer at home. The one where nothing fit perfectly, but everything belonged. Including a lid that didn’t quite work—but no one had the heart to let go.
During a recent trip home, I opened that drawer just to see. There it was. Still unclaimed. Still unmatched. Still clanking confidently. I picked it up. Turned it over. No brand, no number, just scratches that looked like time itself. I asked my mom, “Why do we still have this?” She said, without looking up, “Some things just stay.”
And that’s when I realized: it wasn’t about the lid. It was about the stories it carried, the hands that held it, the meals it tried to cover, and the odd comfort of knowing that even the most mismatched things can have a home.
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.
