Mother’s Kitchen

Chand Sur is Sunita Kohli’s 92-and-half-year-old mother. When Kohli introduced her recently at a function saying her mother was 93, the older woman quickly corrected her daughter to say that she wasn’t 93 yet. She was born in Quetta, Balochistan, but her ancestors were originally from Multan, also called the City of Saints, a hub on the Silk Route, which had once been besieged by Alexander the Great and has been a cultural and economic nerve centre of western Punjab. Sur’s memories of Quetta are still fresh; she says she always wanted to go back, but never could. Her most vivid recollections are those linked to her mother who would invariably cook up a new experiment every day. “We all wanted to taste those special dishes she had cooked,” remembers the nonagenarian.

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