My Spice Dabba
In the serene village of New Village, Beruas, where the rain tapped zinc rooftops and chickens wandered like old gossip across dirt lanes, my kitchen whispered stories—stories that began with a round, dented brass box: the spice dabba.
The gilded casket sat like an heirloom moon on the corner shelf, above a gas stove that hissed with the tired breath of age. The dabba had crossed oceans from India, tucked in the arms of my great-grandmother, who arrived in Malaya with a suitcase of silence and a soul full of spice. Among rubber and palm oil trees and dusky roads, she found a home—and in the heart of her home, she placed her flavours.
The brass dabba was nothing grand—just seven little tin cups tucked into a timeworn circle, glowing softly with the patina of years. There was manjal (golden turmeric), kaanja milagai (fierce and red), natchiragam (cumin’s soft sigh), kadugu (tiny mustard seeds that orchastrate in hot oil), venthaiyam (bitter fenugreek), malli (coriander seeds crushed like secrets), and the mysterious black-and-white alchemy which she called thalippu—a pinch of thunder that woke the oil with music.
My grandmother, barefoot and quiet, wielded it like a wand. She would crouch by the charcoal stove, her sarong tied snug, a kerosene lamp glowing like a halo beside her as she stirred and seasoned by feel. I remember her slender fingers—swift, confident—pinching just the right amount without ever measuring. The scent of mustard seeds crackling in oil would drift into the evening air, blending with the hum of cicadas and the call of the surau’s azan from across the road.
That dabba was her spellbook, and she, a quiet magician.
When she left us, the dabba was given to me—wrapped in an ancestral white vesti, dulled by time and memory, still breathing of kitchen smoke and yesterday’s warmth. At first, I was afraid to touch it, fearing that the city might have rinsed the village rhythm out of me. What if I forgot the order? What if the spices didn’t sing?
But on a monsoon-lit evening in the scenic New Village, the wind pushing rain like a mother hurrying children indoors, I opened the box.
The smell—earthy, nostalgic, alive—pulled me into the past. I reached in, like she used to. A bit of this. A sprinkle of that. The oil sizzled, the spices danced, and just like that, she was in the room with me, again-whispering gently. I made meen curry with okra from the backyard, fish from the morning market, and her voice echoing softly through the steam.
But time moved, as it always does.
The old house in Beruas—wooden, creaky, full of shadows and laughter—is no longer there. It’s been replaced by sharp angles and smooth cement, all clean lines and quiet walls. Modern architecture, we say. Progress, we call it. But every time, I still miss the way the monsoon knocked gently on our zinc roof and how the kitchen walls smelled of stories.
The brass dabba now lives in one of my married sister’s homes—not far from my New Village, still warm with use, still singing its quiet songs.
And me? I’m in London now. Far from cicadas and wild curry trees, but a small pot of curry leaves sits on my windowsill—green, stubborn, and fragrant, like a little echo of home. Some mornings in summer, I brush its leaves just to release the scent, as if summoning my Paatti from the steam of memory. In summer, it thrives—bold and full of life. But come winter, it draws inward, its branches bare, leaves withered or gone, conserving strength. It doesn’t die—it waits. Adjusts. Like us, learning to bend with the seasons. To bloom when we can, and endure when we must.
Now, wrapped in fog and the hum of radiators, in my kitchen, I have a new dabba—sleek and stainless steel, trying its best to hold old magic. But when I lift its lid, and the cumin rises, when the mustard seeds dance and the oil catches fire just so—I am back. Back in Paatti’s kitchen. Back in the breath between past and present.In the hush of village dusk. In Paatti’s hands. In the story that began long before me and lives on in what I cook, what I feed, what I love.
In the gentle rhythm of stirring and simmering, I’ve learnt that the real inheritance is not the thing, the dabba, but the love it leaves behind. The past is never lost—it lingers in our spices and smoke, it breathes through our hands. And the heart, always, belongs to the moment.
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