Columnist Vernika Awal on how food becomes a coping process

The air we breathe in Delhi after Diwali feels almost poisonous, a sharp reminder of how celebrations can so easily turn into collective suffering. Every year we hear about stricter bans on fireworks, tougher rules, better policing, yet the sky continues to crackle and roar long after the festival has ended. Even now, there are bursts in the distance, like a stubborn echo of our indifference. It is not only the suffocating smog that unsettles me but the helplessness of watching it unfold. We seal our windows, run purifiers around the clock, and still that faint acidic burn in the throat refuses to leave. Food, though, has always been my way of coping.

How food becomes a process of coping with adverse times?

I keep wondering what it will take for us to care in a way that truly matters. To act like responsible citizens when the consequences are sitting inside our lungs. Is celebration really so fragile that it cannot survive without fireworks. Somewhere between tradition and toxicity, we seem to have forgotten what is important, what is worth protecting.

When the world outside feels hostile, a good meal feels like a small act of defence. Last weekend, we drove to Gurugram to visit the newly opened Hosa, the Delhi sibling of the popular Goan restaurant everyone has been talking about. Led by Chef Harish Rao and owned by Delhi’s own Rohit Khattar, the man behind Indian Accent and several other beloved spaces, Hosa brings the soulful flavours of the southern states to the capital. The name itself means new in Kannada, a fitting word for a place that celebrates both tradition and reinterpretation.

Having grown up between Mumbai and Dehradun, I have a deep fondness for pav and sweet bun, the breads that shaped my childhood in each city. Pav is not just bread for me. It is muscle memory. It is the comfort that lands on a plate when motivation is low or hunger is high. A quick missal pav devoured after college or a rassawala aloo subzi scooped up with pav when my mother was away and I absolutely refused to roll out rotis. Pav has always been my reliable companion. And the sweet bun, split open and slathered with butter until it melts into the crumb, then dunked in a steaming cup of tea. Or better still, the famous bun tikki of Dehradun that can fix almost anything.

At Hosa, Chef Rao insisted I try their bun stew. I am used to appam and stew as a pairing, but bun stew felt like an adventure. A friend from Kerala once told me it is a common breakfast staple there, and now I finally understand why. At Hosa, they hollow out their house baked bun and fill it with a velvety stew until it spills over the edges. One spoonful and I could imagine busy office goers from One Horizon Centre grabbing it in the middle of a hectic day. 

It made me think about how beautifully we have adapted breads that were never originally ours. Over time, we found the combinations that comfort us and made them entirely Indian. In Delhi, no self-respecting chai stall would dream of serving tea without bun makkhan by its side. It may be humble, but the first bite always feels like a soft landing. A resident of Janakpuri, Arvinder Singh, once told me how bun makkhan became his sanctuary. He spent days outside a hospital while his wife was admitted, and that chai stall, with its warm buns and generous smear of butter, offered him a few precious minutes of comfort. There, among others holding on to their own worries, he found a quiet kind of camaraderie. The kind that only food, and the stories we carry with it, can offer.

Perhaps that is what I am holding on to these days. When the air outside feels heavy and hostile, these small pockets of comfort remind us that we still belong to a community that cares, even if we sometimes forget it. Food has a way of grounding us, offering a moment of relief and a sense of togetherness that the world around us seems determined to take away.