Tamarind

We bought a food truck. We found it on a marketplace of the same name. The eponymous marketplace. It was disheveled and blue, in appearance and mood.

It’s a $20,000 gambit. An affordable gambit. Money is only fun when used to bet on new projects. (It is also fun, in the short term, to watch money go up. But that leaves you in a nowhere state where nothing means anything and purpose dies in a well.)

Nurturing new projects is the spice of life. Sustaining old ones, the soul.

The last few weeks have been arduous and exciting. Arduous, because all new ventures require laborious labor—clicking buttons, filing forms, connecting electric. But once the system has blood circulating through it, it breathes.

Now I’m inside a kitchen with fire, water, and ingredients. I’m shaping recipes with my brother and a chef who has worked in restaurants his whole life. He is showing us the ropes and ideating with us. We try his raita, Shan’s daal, my chutney. We attempt to assign language to the currents that run from our tongue to our brains. This one has a flatness. That one, an acidity. Texture, wetness and balance are all considered and communicated the way the blind might describe the sun.

I think of an idea, so I jump on my bike to the grocery store. A can of pineapple to add to the tamarind chutney. I remember tasting it once at a restaurant. I charge it to the new bank account that we stashed our bet in. I get a spritz of anxiety when I remember that no money is coming in and new costs keep arriving. The anxiety is vinegary. I remember that statistic about how 9 million out of every 9 million and one restaurants fail. But who cares, I’ve already pushed my chips in. And so what if it fails? It won’t fail. But even if it does, I lived a lovely little thing. But it won’t fail. Because I am determined. And right now it’s fun to not think about the money. I swipe without care. The money will come. The determination is hearty and light; similar to roasted red peppers.

The pineapple works magic with the tamarind. It matches that tandoori flavor of the chicken. We stand in a circle in the cramped kitchen and each bite into the same paratha roll. New ideas appear. What if we add pickled onions and those peppers that taste like determination? The final form of the menu begins its outline. Everything is easy.