tanvi / chicago / indian

I once started writing about my top ten meals of all time, a good meal being one of my top ten favorite (semi)concrete things in life. I couldn't write about them all at once, so will post them as they were experienced, every so often.

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T and I met as the only freshmen in high school biology and have never stopped giggling and neuroticizing together since. Well, there was a gap towards the end of college where we didn’t keep in touch as well, but nothing was lost. Yale gave us a week off for Thanksgiving (what novelty!) so I visited her in Chicago. She took me on honestly one of the best dates ever, with the best Indian food ever. Devon is the Indian & Pakistani neighborhood of Chicago, and streets were lined with Indian restaurants one after another. It was the first time I had Indian style okra (perhaps any kind of okra). I don’t remember the name of the place or what we talked about but I do remember being in awe of how she’d grown, so beautifully, inside and out. I remember that it was very cold outside, that inside was a warm brown haze, and that our table was small; she sat facing a window to outside and I sat facing the restaurant; we were in a corner. Afterwards she took me to a jazz club called the Green Mill. The sounds coating the walls and drenching the silhouettes between chairs, tables, stage, drinks on the table, made me sharply, dizzily aware of fullness.