Every kitchen has its misfits — the odd spoon, the chipped bowl, the tin that once held sweets and now holds safety pins. But perhaps the most enduring of them all is the plastic lid that never quite fit. Too tight to press down in one go, too loose to seal properly, always requiring some combination of force, prayer, and thumb strength. And yet, we kept it. Not out of frugality alone, but out of some quiet, unspoken loyalty. Because in our home, throwing away a lid — even a stubborn, wonky, disobedient one — felt like giving up.
This particular lid in our house was red, warped at the edges, and permanently smelled of turmeric. It didn’t match any of our newer dabbas, but somehow it still had a place. It sat in the drawer with confidence, refusing to be forgotten. Sometimes it ended up on the wrong container. Sometimes it just rested on top of a box like a hat — purely decorative, never functional. Still, no one tossed it out.
“Use That One, It’s Still Fine”
My mother had a special phrase for things that barely worked: *“Chalta hai.”* And that lid? It was the definition of *chalta hai*. It didn’t click shut, didn’t hold soup, didn’t pass any airtight test — but it “still covered,” which, in our house, was qualification enough to survive another year.
It was the lid she’d grab in a hurry when the good containers were all packed for someone’s tiffin. The one she’d place on top of leftover sabzi, even though everyone knew it would leak. The one we’d find in the fridge, half covering a steel bowl of curd that had already formed a skin because the lid had done absolutely nothing.
And yet, it was always washed, dried, and returned to the drawer — warped, loyal, and completely useless in theory. But in practice? It was part of the kitchen’s soul.
Keeping What Doesn’t Work — But Belongs
What I didn’t realize then was that that lid — annoying as it was — represented a deeper kind of affection. We don’t just keep things because they’re useful. We keep them because they’ve been around. Because they’ve seen things. That lid had once been new. It had once sealed a box of Diwali sweets, survived the fridge explosion of 2004, and had been used to transport rasam to a neighbor during flu season.
Throwing it away would’ve felt like erasing something that had participated. A container may hold food. But a lid? It keeps the story from spilling.
Now I Have My Own Misfit Lid
In my kitchen today, I have an almost identical lid — clear, scratched, slightly melted on one side from a too-close call with the stovetop. It doesn’t belong to any of my sleek modern containers, but I still reach for it. Maybe out of habit. Maybe out of muscle memory. Maybe because I now understand what my mother meant when she said, “It still works, kind of.”
And when someone asks why I keep it, I smile and say, “Because it’s always been there.” Because like all the other imperfect things we hang on to — the mugs with hairline cracks, the bent spoons, the dabbas with faded labels — the lid doesn’t have to work perfectly. It just has to remind you that this kitchen is lived in, and loved in.
Some Things Don’t Fit. We Keep Them Anyway.
So here’s to the plastic lid that never fit. The one that made a mess. The one we cursed. The one we pressed down with a thump, then a cloth, then a prayer. It never really did its job. But it stayed. Through meals, through seasons, through multiple reorganizations of the kitchen drawer.
And somehow, that made it just right.
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.
