Taste of friendship and nostalgia

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It was a regular Sunday evening. I was chatting with a very dear friend of mine. She shared a photo of snacks she had made on that day. A look at it made me feel like I was back in childhood, with comfort, safety, and pleasure. Growing up, visiting my aunt (mother’s elder sister) was a once-a-month affair. I used to look forward to it. Her face always had a smile when she looked at me. I felt safe there. She used to make me the same savoury dish. In fact, it may have been the last dish I tasted from her before she died. The item wasn’t even near me, but I felt it. I told this to my friend. She could have said nice and ignored it. It was a boring story. A few weeks later, I met her. She had made it for me and brought it. I was flushed with emotion. I had a few pieces. I considered myself as someone hard. I was melting. By this point my aunt had already died. I smelt my childhood. I felt comfort of safety. Along with it, I had a sense that I struggle to this day to express. The act of my friend brought more taste to it. I can’t to this day think about it without feeling nostalgia, gratitude and a strong sense of affection to my friend.

The following incident happened almost twenty years ago. I was studying in Scotland. Three of us friends went from Chennai to Glasgow to study. We had completed nearly 75% of our course. I was maturing from a boy who was taken care of all his life to a man within one year. Then we met someone with whom we did an assignment together. I wasn’t good at making new friends as my blunt nature puts most people off in the first interaction. This was an exception. One Friday, she called us for dinner. She kept insisting we come. Three of us went to her house. She was living with her boyfriend and a couple of other students from our university. She had made Chole, a gravy made from chick peas. Unlike my friends, I hadn’t tasted it before. She served it with freshly toasted Pitta bread. Each bite was one to relish. I shared my appreciation that made the rest of them think I was exaggerating. I was tasting something that others did feel. One said, it needed less salt. Another felt, it would be better with a bit more spice. For me, it was perfect. I had since had Chole over a hundred times. This taste still lingers. What was I tasting here?

What was I tasting here?

It wasn’t just the savoury snack my friend had made. It wasn’t just Chole paired with Pitta on a cold Friday night in Glasgow. It was something more. Something layered. Something human.

When my friend shared that photo of the snack on a regular Sunday evening, I didn’t just see it. I felt it. A lifetime away, that one image unlocked a vault of warmth buried somewhere deep inside. In a second, I was back in my aunt’s home. A monthly ritual. Her smile. That kitchen. That familiar plate. That unmistakable smell.

Olfactory memory is the memory of smell and is the most emotionally charged of all. Because smell is processed through the olfactory bulb, a structure with direct connections to the amygdala and hippocampus, the brain’s emotion and memory centres. It doesn’t pass through the thalamus like sight or sound. There is no filtration or delay. That’s why a smell can make you feel something before you know what it is.

That memory, long asleep, was jolted awake. I remembered not just the taste of the snack but the feeling of being cared for. The feeling of being seen. The feeling of being a child—safe, protected, uncomplicated. And then came the moment, a few weeks later, when my friend made it for me. That changed everything. She didn’t have to. Most wouldn’t. But she did. And just like that, a social act of care layered itself on top of a private reservoir of memory, deepening the taste into something sacred.

The taste was real. The flavour was right. But it was the emotion behind the act that turned it into something unforgettable. Her gesture released a flood of oxytocin, the bonding hormone, making me feel connected, not just to her, but to every person and memory that snack had ever meant to me. Dopamine reinforced it with pleasure, and endorphins softened the edges of grief.

That’s why I melted. That’s why it lingers.

And then there was that Chole in Glasgow. It wasn’t the most perfect dish by technical standards. My friends noticed flaws. But for me, it was perfect. Not because of salt or spice. But because it came unexpectedly, through the window of new friendship, during a moment of becoming, when I was learning how to stand on my own, far from everything familiar.

I didn’t know it then, but first-time emotional connections, when paired with new tastes, get stored more deeply. The brain binds novel stimuli with heightened attentional focus and emotional salience. That Chole wasn’t just a chickpea curry. It was the first warmth of a friend I didn’t expect to have. And my brain decided: remember this. The combination of novelty, emotion, and social bonding led to a powerful encoding. So powerful that I can recall it with more clarity than the dishes I’ve had a hundred times since.

So again, what was I tasting?

I was tasting nostalgia served with the savoury. Friendship folded gently into Pitta bread. I was tasting how food carries not just flavour, but meaning, how what we eat becomes a vessel for the people we share it with, and the moments that surprise us. Food doesn’t just nourish the body. It archives the soul. And sometimes, the simplest dishes unlock the deepest parts of ourselves without a word being spoken.

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