Even grown-ups turn to children when they are sick. As much as we hate to admit it or cover it up, deep inside, it is a reality. There is something romantic about caring for your sick loved ones. It evokes Shelly and Keats in every one of us. This was the time when I tasted that.
It was 2009, and the Swine Flu was rampaging across the world. It was scary for many people, but the reality was it was no different from COVID, SARS or Influenza. I was newly married and was in Nottingham with my wife. I contracted Swine Flu from one of my colleagues. Those who showed symptoms were advised to stay indoors. The symptoms were bad. I felt like my lungs might explode at any minute. Breathing was hard at times. I didn’t feel like eating. Combining these with the fever and shivers, made me feel useless. My wife made pepper rasam (a very thin soup made from tomato, tamarind, crushed pepper and cumin). She fed me that rice with that rasam. The smell of coriander was mesmerising, the interplay of flavours woke the nerves of my tongue from their slumber and as the warmth hit my throat my sluggishness from flu started to melt. Such was my state after eating the first serve that I asked for more. I am licking my lips as I recount it 16 years later.
Fast forward to the present, weekday cooking in our house is a chore. We take turns depending on our schedule. Like any other working couple, we finish tasks quickly to focus our time and energy on our business. Eating is an even bigger chore. We grab our lunch and get in front of my computer. Over the last few weeks, I have been showing disrespect, which is the fuel that powers us to do the work we love. If we can’t spend a few more minutes caring for the food and enjoying it, what am I doing to myself? As with most such thoughts, I didn’t bother doing anything about it. A couple of days back, my wife said she wanted to cook something different that day. I didn’t show any interest in the menu. I started working. My meetings ran late into the lunch time. She was waiting for me. Once done, we took sometime to plate the food had made. Once I sat down to eat and even before I tasted the first spoonful, I felt a taste in my tongue. Every spoonful from that point was heavenly. I wasn’t even aware that I liked those items. So much so that I blurted, “mmm.. heavenly!!!” without even realising. My wife started laughing.
What was I tasting these times? Was it the nurture of the sick person? Was it the love and affection in preparing the food?
Lying on that bed, worn down by flu and fear, I wasn’t just being fed. I was being cared for. Deeply. Quietly. With a kind of attention that heals. That pepper rasam wasn’t just food. It was my wife’s love, distilled into a broth. And my body, which had rejected everything else, recognised it, not logically but biochemically. As I inhaled the scent of coriander and felt the sharpness of pepper on my tongue, it wasn’t just my senses waking up. It was my nervous system. The vagus nerve, often called the “care nerve,” was activated by the warmth, by the slowness of being fed, by the comfort of not having to do anything except receive. That alone begins to calm inflammation, reduce heart rate, lower cortisol levels. This is what nurturing does. It doesn’t just soothe the mind it repairs the body.
And of course, dopamine did its job, rewarding the moment, preserving it in memory. So well, in fact, that sixteen years later, I still salivate when I think of it. That’s emotional memory in action, encoded in scent and flavour.
Years later, in a very different setting, it happened again. No sickness. No fear. Just a day like any other. Yet somehow, the food was extraordinary. It wasn’t the ingredients. It wasn’t hunger.
It was the unexpected pause in the rhythm of busyness a moment when my wife decided to bring intention to something that had become routine. And even though I wasn’t paying attention to what was being made, something in my brain picked up on the cues: the waiting, the plating, the care. And it reacted before I even took a bite. This is called anticipatory taste perception. Our brain, using context and past associations, generates flavour expectations before food even touches the tongue. When the context is rich in emotion like love, care, or even nostalgia our brain literally enhances taste perception, flooding the experience with dopamine and oxytocin, turning a simple meal into a sensory symphony.
That’s why I blurted “heavenly!” without knowing what I was eating. My body had already tasted the intention.
So no, I wasn’t just tasting rasam or lunch.
I was tasting nurture in its purest form when someone tends to us in our weakness. I was tasting love, made visible in the everyday. I was tasting the return of meaning to something we often take for granted.
Food is never just food. Sometimes, it’s medicine. Sometimes, it’s memory. But when it’s made with love, served with care, and received with presence it becomes a language of connection.
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