Bounty of bliss in Dubai

The writer enjoying misal pav in Dubai. Pic/Rosalyn D’mello

Until the night before we were to leave for Dubai I didn't allow myself to fully experience the anticipation of seeing my family again. I was nervous about the results of the PCR test. I was apprehensive something might go wrong with the flight. Until I was securely strapped to my seat on the aircraft, I remained in a state of certain disbelief. That's how desperately I wanted to see my family again. Eventually, after finally landing and exiting the airport, there they were, and I hugged each of them with an intensity I hadn't previously known. My mother was at home awaiting my arrival and when I touched and held her everything felt right once again.

Since then, as per the D'Mello house rules, my life and schedule has revolved around eating, with the evening menu always being decided before lunch is even cooked. What can I tell you of that first morsel of steamed rice with prawn curry and fish and vegetable that I placed in my mouth. If home had a taste… this would be it. There is a thrill to each bite because of how long it has been since those flavours danced on my tongue. It isn't that I took them for granted, it's that I have been living in a place where they are rare, and despite being able to make many things for myself, there is an indescribable pleasure in being fed. That is what I have missed most. Perhaps that is precisely what we all miss when we think about our parents' kitchens. It is a particular joy, to be provided for in this way, to be indulged, to have my father go buy me mangoes because Mani, the maid, said the Pakistani kind was still very much available. To ask for the dishes that delight me most, like the bone meat curry my father makes, with which I am not afraid to admit I can never compete. And to suck the marrow and to use my fingers unabashedly, and to have vegetable over which grated coconut has been generously sprinkled. And to have Mani's biryani, which is excellent on many counts, but mostly because it was differently satisfying to be nourished by the labour of someone who doesn't know how else to communicate their joy of seeing you but by feeding you.

Beyond the home table I have also been making up for other voids I didn't know existed. Like my love of Missal Pav. At Chat Bazaar in Al Karama I ordered a plate and after what has felt like centuries and rediscovered the specificity of nursing a tongue overheated by spice, dousing it with heady masala chai, and the ensuing effect: hiccups. I don't mean this at all as a complaint, it is a sensation I know and savour and hadn't encountered in the longest time. On day two of my being here, I went to the Pakistani restaurant to have mutton kheema and parantha, and the best karak chai I've had in two years or so. The parantha was large and oily and so profoundly delectable.

Beyond the joys of eating and being fed, I have enjoyed being back in Dubai, a city I like for its diversity. It's one of few places outside of India where I do not feel out of place or as though I don't belong. It has become familiar to me over the last almost 20 years since my brothers have been based in this part of the world, and through my repeated visits for work, and in order to spend time with them and their kids. This time around, unlike previous times, I have circled almost entirely on family. There are many friends I know and whose company I would ordinarily seek out who live here whom I would love to have seen. But I knew in advance I would have little desire to step out to see others at the expense of time with my beloveds. One week is not enough, but I thought if I allow it to not to be dissipated with too much activity, I could stretch it out somehow, allow for the illusion of longevity. It has also felt wonderful to have my partner with me, and to experience him within the set-up of my family, as a part of our unit, bound within our twisted chemistries.

The reunion has been a bit incomplete, though, in that my sister and her husband are in Mumbai, and I don't know when I will see them next. A few days after I return to Italy, I begin a residency in Innsbruck for which I would need to spend almost two weeks at a stretch, after which I return to Venice to conduct a workshop with architecture students before returning to South Tyrol to be part of an event. It might be my busiest month thus far, and it's possible I may not be able to help my partner at all with this year's harvest. But there's a part of me that feels elated about my immediate future, about returning to where I live now in the comfort of having had this family time, basking in the glow of being well-fed in every sense of the term.

Deliberating on the life and times of Everywoman, Rosalyn D'Mello is a reputable art critic and the author of A Handbook For My Lover. She tweets @RosaParx
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