The soft hum of voices and the gentle clang of pots and pans rustles me awake. I make my way downstairs to see Mommy and Amma working away in the kitchen. My grandmother’s careworn hands grasp a paring knife, slowly peeling back the dried shells of a pile of cardamom pods. She tips the seeds out of each pod into the mortar, before bringing the pestle down in hypnotic rhythm, breaking the seeds down into silken, fragrant powder. My mother is seated nearby at the chirava next to a stack of fresh coconuts split in half on a steel dish.

My father made the wooden stool for her, its serrated blade jutting out from the seat so she could grate coconuts by hand. One by one, she grazes the meat of the fruit along the sharpened blade, letting the white flakes fall into the bowl below her, carefully rotating each coconut shell to ensure no piece would go to waste. Next to her, a glass of fresh coconut water waits for me atop the counter. They’re making kozhikotta, traditional steamed dumplings from India and my favorite holiday treat.

“We make kozhikotta at Easter as a way to remember Christ’s suffering,” my mom explains as she brings brown sugar and water to a low boil before tossing in the spices and coconut flakes. The history lesson goes over my head at the time, with my attention turned squarely to the rich, sugary coconut filling bubbling in the pan, waiting for it to cool down just enough for me to sneak a taste when nobody is looking.

I would later learn that the hardened exterior of the dumpling is meant to represent the stones hurled toward Jesus, a symbol of the hardship he endured.

Six months have passed since my mom had her brain tumor removed. In between endless doctor’s visits and radiation treatments, our roles have reversed. I’ve held her hands as she relearned how to stand, and watched as she took her first steps for the second time. And yet, alongside managing her medications and driving her to therapy appointments, I’ve become a boy once more. I listen to the lilt of her voice as she recalls her youth, sharing stories about our family and history while she teaches me how to make the recipes passed to her from her mother, who learned from her mother, and so on and so on, stretching back countless generations.

The passing down looks different today than it did in years past: now I’m getting my culinary education by doing, not just by watching her in the kitchen. My mom wants me to learn everything; the tips she learned as a girl (a pinch of salt helps the onions to soften faster when making spinach thoran), along with the shortcuts she’s honed since leaving India forty years ago (a tablespoon of barbecue sauce added at the end of cooking chicken curry amplifies the flavors).

My mother stands by my side, instructing me to lower the heat while we toast rice flour for this year’s batch of kozhikotta. Her eyes watch the pan for the slightest color-change to occur before she quickly tells me to turn off the heat and move on to the next step. I add boiling water to the flour, waiting for it to cool ever so slightly, before I knead the piping hot dough into individual portions.

I roll up my sleeves and brush a thin layer of cooking oil over my palms. My mom and I work together, forming the balls of dough into little cups before filling them with the coconut mixture. I pinch my kozhikotta closed, cringing when a crack appears in the dough despite my best efforts. “Not to worry,” she says. She reaches over with her left hand, the one she had to learn how to use again, to take it from me and fix my mistake.

The dumplings cook for fifteen minutes and then we pull them out to rest. As the steam rises from twelve glistening white kozhikotta, my mom expresses her delight. “Wow, Ashwin! Take a picture of them,” she exclaims. I know what she’s thinking: It’s impossible to tell the ones she made from mine.