By Kiran Singh Sirah

The news coming out of Afghanistan has been painful to witness. So many of these images of suffering—the cargo plane filled with refugees, and especially the image of the baby being passed over barbed wire to a solider—reminded me of my own family’s experience as refugees. Forty-nine years ago, they were forced to flee their home in Uganda along with 50,000 others, when a murderous dictator threatened them with genocide.

My parents didn’t have much notice. With their visas, my mom and dad and brother (who was just six months old) were given 48 hours to pack up and leave. There was no time to say goodbyes or get properly organized. Worse, my parents were robbed of the few belongings they carried on their way to the airport. The thieves took everything except for the clothes on their backs and my mother’s wedding jewelry, which she had hidden in my brother’s diaper. She later used it to open her first bank account in England.

I’ve heard many stories about my parents’ experience, as well as the many other countries where they had roots, over the years. My parents were actually British citizens because they had grown up in former British colonies; their parents had been brought to East Africa as laborers from India to help build the railroads across the desert. My late mother told me stories about her life growing up in a small town on the border between Kenya and Uganda. Even now, my father sometimes speaks of the experience with a sense of nostalgia, describing that time in their lives as a kind of adventure. He recently told me about when their plane landed in Ethiopia to refuel. He recalls not being able to disembark from the plane, but can’t quite remember why. I think that speaks to the chaos and confusion of evacuation, even the ones that go relatively well.

An interesting and poignant coda is that when I first moved to this region, eight years ago, I met Scott Niswonger, a local businessman and philanthropist. When he asked about my background over coffee, I told him about my parents’ story. In response, he shared that at the time my parents fled, he was a cargo plane pilot who delivered food and supplies to refugees at the Ugandan border. I was stunned. Here I was, the new guy in town, shaking the hand of a man who had helped my people many years ago, thousands of miles away, before I was born.

It really is a small world! And acts of kindness, however large or small, reverberate through our lives in amazing, unexpected ways. I try to bear this in mind when I see people on the news who are in great distress. Among the stories of turmoil and chaos and fear, there are also stories of love and compassion and resilience.

It’s vital to ask how we, as individuals and as organizations, can help others in these moments of crisis. In graduate school, I studied shelters that housed people who needed a place to stay. Everyone who was there—veterans, former professionals, artists, and more—had never expected to find themselves in that situation. (Anything can happen. That’s perhaps the primary lesson I learned.) My thesis, “A Stone in the Brook,” took its title from an interview with one of the shelter’s clients, who described the shelter as a kind of stepping stone: “It’s just what you need to step on to get safely to the other side.” As caring members of society, we can help build such transitional tools and spaces to lend a hand to people who need safe passage from one stage of their lives to the next.

I’m not necessarily talking about grand gestures (though of course those are needed, too) so much as small actions we can take on an everyday basis. This is by no means a comprehensive list, but I hope it’s a helpful start for anyone who’s looking for ideas about how to help.
 
Check in with Folks 
One lesson that I think all of us have learned during the pandemic is to check in with your people. This is of course true in our personal lives, but it’s also relevant at the institutional level. In times of crisis, it’s all too easy for work to become siloed as we scramble in isolation. By staying aware of one another’s projects, efforts, and ideas, we can lend a hand when it’s needed, avoid redundancy, find inspiration, and promote one another’s work. With the simple act of a check-in, we constantly cultivate our networks, which helps them stay as healthy, vibrant, and useful as possible. Before you start your own initiative, consider if your resources would be better spent by contributing to someone else’s.

An organization where I serve as a Senior Fellow, the Alliance for Peacebuilding, has been compiling visa information and leads for the refugees of Afghanistan. I recently shared this resource with a friend of mine, a poet and arts administrator based in New York City, who had herself fled Afghanistan as a young girl. She has been trying to secure passage for artists and members of her extended family in Afghanistan. Pooling resources, especially in the face of a rapidly changing crisis, can help save time.
 
Offer Multiple Forms of Support
We often think of emotional support as lending an ear when someone needs to talk, but it can take many other forms. Think outside the box with regard to the forms of support you are in a position to offer, including financial and material efforts. If you feel unsure about the best way to provide assistance, a good first step is to simply ask someone what they need.

As I have watched the crisis unfold in Afghanistan, I found myself thinking back to my dad’s experience as a refugee in England. His new employers let him use work resources and office time to contact the family in Uganda who he had been forced to leave behind, including his parents, siblings, and nieces and nephews, so he could help arrange their visas. I often think about that act of empathy and how that small gesture meant so much in my dad’s life. In the small English town where my parents settled, many other people were welcoming, too, offering them everything from food to record albums. They taught my family about Christmas and Easter, Sunday roasts, and fish and chips. These were small but powerful acts of kindness, swift actions and welcoming spirits that helped my parents overcome their grief and the challenges they faced as they settled in a new place.

Recently, with my dad’s bosses’ example in mind, I touched base with a member of my staff who formerly served in the military in Afghanistan. (Refugees are not the only people who are affected by these crises; with Afghanistan, for instance, it’s a difficult time for anyone who has a connection to that part of the world.) I encouraged him to use office time if he needed to connect with some of his former colleagues—fellow veterans or active servicepeople. Sometimes the best way to support someone is to facilitate other connections and conversations.
 
Preserve and Share Stories 
As we welcome displaced people into our communities, it’s important to hold space for their stories and their traditions. (I always remember how my parents used masala spices on our fish and chips.) Diversity and multiculturalism are not just important values, but also cultural treasure troves. In the United States, the cross-pollination of traditions and ideas continue to be one of our greatest cultural assets.

But there are communities whose stories are suppressed. Domestically, we’ve seen this dynamic challenged by movements like Black Lives Matter, which has brought unheard (or under-heard) stories into mainstream media. Abroad, there are journalists and citizens working hard to challenge government regimes that suppress marginalized people’s stories. The opportunity to share and hear these stories is a sacred human right. It’s also a tool that helps us build connections and better understand the world and our place in it.

In 2015, I received an email from the storyteller Noa Baum, a Jewish immigrant from Israel who has made America her home. After she had shared a story from her tradition, Baum was approached by an older woman who was a Holocaust survivor who said, “Isn’t it great that we don’t have to hide our stories anymore?” I believe, it is our duty and our privilege to protect people’s stories from around the world—a responsibility that we can all carry into our daily lives, as we meet new people and learn about where they’ve been.
 
Strengthen Your Community
Times of crisis can be incredible opportunities not just to help other people, but also to strengthen our existing communities. As we come together to help political refugees, victims of natural disasters, those who have been harmed by the pandemic, and people who have been displaced by the housing crisis, we enrich our own lives, our shared culture, and our personal and professional networks.

I had one such experience a number of years ago, when I worked with a friend of mine to coordinate an online platform to help people who were fleeing Hurricane Irma. (We recently reactivated this group to help the Hurricane Ida evacuees.) At the time, evacuees were streaming from Florida into our region, often without their belongings or a place to stay. More than 150 people offered their homes, campgrounds, RVs, food, supplies, and financial aid to help thousands of displaced and traumatized people. But their generosity wasn’t just a one-way street; it became the basis for new relationships, including friendships that remain in place to this day. My arts organization offered complimentary tickets to newcomers to attend events, make connections, and find relief and comfort in a welcoming community (and other arts and cultural organizations across the region did the same). One evacuee, a musician, found a gig in Johnson City. The job helped him survive, but it also expanded and enriched our local arts scene—a win-win situation.
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Serving a stranger can have a positive ripple effect through generations to come, and change your life as an individual in ways you can’t predict or expect. I want to challenge you to think of other ways that you can serve as a stone in the brook. Even the smallest act of kindness may be the one that helps someone who’s struggling make it to the other side.

By Kiran Singh Sirah
 

Traveling will take you almost anywhere, whether it’s by car, or plane, or bus. But I’ve always had the notion that you haven’t truly arrived until your soul walks the distance, and that process can take more time.

A former U.S. Army officer who had been based in Afghanistan once told me that you have to spend at least 10 years in a new place before you can really understand it. You can learn a lot in less time, of course, and you can make all sorts of observations during even a short visit. But to truly sense the poetry of everyday life in a place, to really feel like part of it, 10 years is a good rule of thumb.

I’ve been thinking about this lately because it’s been almost exactly 10 years since I first got my visa approved at the U.S. embassy in London for what was initially a two-year course of study at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill and Duke. (Now, of course, I’m a permanent resident.) There’s no question that I’ve had a great time, and have enjoyed incredible experiences with wonderful people. But lately I’ve been thinking about the question: what have I come to learn about the U.S. in this time that I’ve been here? And do I feel like I’ve truly come to understand it?

As a graduate student, I arrived in the U.S. on August 8, my late mother’s birthday. My dad, brother, and nephew and niece had seen me off at Heathrow airport. Fifteen years earlier, Heathrow was the last place I saw my mother alive, as she waved me off for a long trip to the states. My family had won a green card lottery, and I was exploring the idea of an overseas move. But just a few weeks later, after her sudden death, I returned to look after my family and gave up on the idea of building a life abroad. I was 19 years old.

It took some time, but eventually, I made my way back. And so in 2011, I found myself sitting outside with a cup of tea, looking up at the big North Carolina pine trees in wonder and awe. As a graduate student studying peace and folklore, the pace of study was faster than I was used to. At first I felt like a fish out of water. Like I didn’t belong. But I picked up a very American skill: I learned to adapt. I vividly remember sitting in a class where we had been asked to read a book relating to a place. I had lived and worked there, so I could contribute from direct experience, which brought another dimension to the discussion.

Folklore studies encourages real-life interactions, not just discussions and theories. Often we were asked to write ethnographies, or anthropological descriptions, of our experiences observing different kinds of people, traditions, and cultural expressions. I remember one professor saying to me that American folklorists so often study the “other” by traveling to other countries or studying minority cultures and ethnic groups. She pointed out that as a person of color with a British accent, I had an unusual perspective—and an opportunity to observe (and perhaps help) a country that was grappling with its own history. She described my role as helping a nation to speak to itself, promoting dialogue in the places where that needed to happen. This mandate naturally led me to the International Storytelling Center, where we celebrate different cultures, encourage dialogues on topics that need to be discussed, explore historical disparities, work with youth, and support community workers in their roles.

My role has required a lot of travel, delivering keynotes and working with communities all across the country. The U.S. is much bigger than my home country, Britain, where a road trip is generally two or three hours. In about five hours, you can cross the entire country! Now that I live in Tennessee, a drive that long wouldn’t even take me halfway across the state. It’s a huge place, which is part of what makes it so diverse and interesting. I’ve had the opportunity to visit many states across this nation to give talks and workshops and lead roundtable discussions. I’ve been to the nation’s capital; to New York City and San Diego; to West Virginia, South Carolina; the Midwest, and Arizona, and more. I’ve spoken in all kinds of settings, including the U.S. Senate, the State Department, and the United Nations—even the White House. On some level, I approach all of these places with my folklorist’s brain, treating them as opportunities to observe and learn as much as to impart my own knowledge and expertise.

I was invited to Charleston, South Carolina, following the massacre at Mother Emanuel Church that took nine lives. I did a workshop at an inner-city high school to help the kids make sense of their own stories, and how they relate to what’s going on in the world. It was impossible to ignore how close we were to the port that was the point of entry for nearly half of the enslaved Africans who were brought to the United States. There was a palpable legacy between the history of that port and the shooting. Still, all around these difficult and unspeakable things from the past and the present, a vibrant culture was thriving in Charleston. In the neighborhoods, I felt a sense of welcome, connection, and belonging. It felt like the heartbeat of America.

Over these past 10 years, I’ve had the chance to set foot in the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and the Mississippi River. I walked for three days and nights on the Appalachian Trail. I learned to make authentic Southern buttermilk biscuits that would make your grandma proud. I sat in a café lit by candlelight after Hurricane Sandy, and then the next day walked to Manhattan to share a poem at the United Nations on the International Day of Peace, hosted by Jane Goodall and Yo-Yo Ma. I’ve worked with the team of Her Majesty the Queen of America, Dolly Parton, and presented stories at the Library of Congress.

What I have observed is this: as a diverse nation, the United States is very much a story in progress. It’s a vibrant, multifaceted tale, but it also has deep flaws that are holding us back from being all that we can be. I’ve had the opportunity to witness this dynamic firsthand many times. I happened to be in Baton Rouge when Alton Sterling was killed. And I’ve been here for the reckoning after the murder of George Floyd, watching peaceful candlelight vigils in the face of the violent rise of white supremacy. It’s very clear that across the country, we’re still grappling with the legacies of slavery and the Civil War. These events weren’t really so long ago, and we all need safe spaces for reflection and dialogue as we contemplate them.
Even as we try to come to terms with the past, the present inflicts new challenges. During the pandemic, I’ve led trainings to help nurse practitioners and other frontline workers navigate the tough emotional terrain of the American health care system. I’ve worked with people and communities to show how stories and storytelling can help us feel connected in this lonely era of social distancing.

I’ve always felt that some of the best storytelling happens off the stage, coming from people who simply feel moved to promote positive change. We all have stories to offer, and it’s incumbent upon us to harness their power as a community resource. The act of sharing our stories plays a critical role in challenging dangerous extremist ideologies. More subtly, it challenges our own perspective on society, and of history. We have to crowdsource our understanding of who we are and how we got here. A single perspective doesn’t function on its own; it requires context and community. Collectively, we can meet any challenge head on.

This is the context for the collaborative work with many partners in the arts, and with peacebuilders and world changers and policy makers. So much of this work as storytellers and story keepers is about advancing the vision of a more peaceful and just world, and pushing through complexity to a form of enlightened simplicity. On this front, there’s obviously still much work we need to do.

I often think of the famous quote from the cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, who said, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.” I think that sentiment applies when we’re nurturing an art form that belongs to everyone. I truly believe that storytelling has and will change the world. Our culture and our understanding of culture is always growing and expanding. There’s always room for more stories, more perspectives. There’s so much to gain, and nothing to lose.
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As a folklorist, I no longer feel like an outsider who’s here to help Americans understand themselves. I’m not observing from a distance anymore, because I recognize that I’m integral to this nation as well in my roles as an immigrant and a new Appalachian. After 10 years of living and working in the United States, I guess my soul has had time to walk the distance. Finally, it feels like home.

Since I moved to the U.S., Thanksgiving has become my favorite holiday. This year I’ll be celebrating it abroad, heading to the United Kingdom to see family and friends after a quick work trip to Geneva. (I’m receiving an award at the United Nations!)  We don’t have anything like Thanksgiving in England, where I grew up, but food has always been a huge part of how the people in my family relate to one another, and to others in the world. From an early age, my mom taught me by example how to use food to build community. She’d invite strangers home for meals, or make breakfast and tea for all the garbage men. (Some days we’d have four garbage trucks parked in front of the house.) On the anniversary of her father’s death, she took donations of drinks and food to charity shops or to the children’s hospital.

I remember us all as a family—my mom, dad, my brother, cousins, and other family members—together in 1995, sitting at home in the living room. It was the holiday season, and of course mom had made a big meal. The house smelled of warm spices and home cooking. I can almost hear my mom’s loud, confident voice (she was life of any party, and usually the most dominant voice in the room) asking, “Where we will all be five years from now?” But the next year she passed away suddenly, from a blood clot, at the age of 46.

I was traveling in the states at the time. When I got the news and flew home, my brother Raine was the one who picked me up from the airport.
Let me rewind for a minute to explain that my relationship with my brother has never been perfect. All too often we were in different cities—or different countries!—as well as on different paths. We’ve always loved each other, but we used to fight a lot.

My mother always emphasized the bond between us, as brothers, and we were there for one another in many ways from an early age. As two brown kids, we stood out in our almost all-white hometown. We wore our hair long as Sikhs. On top of that, our mother was ill for some years, especially when we much younger. There would be stretches where she’d be in hospital for weeks or even months at a time. When she was home, she was usually in the kitchen cooking, singing, and telling stories. I loved to help her cook, which I learned more or less by watching, while my brother was outside helping my dad fix the car. When my mother became very ill, there were times we had to cook for ourselves.

As we got older, my brother and I drifted further apart. We had different interests, different friends, different jobs. It felt like we didn’t have much in common, except for our shared history and heritage. But a few months ago, after I had an idea for a recipe, I went on Facebook to see my brother had posted a photo of a dish he’d made—and it was almost exactly the same design. I was reminded that we’re more alike than it seems on the surface.
Thanks to social media, I’ve watched a lot of my brother’s life unfold from afar. And of course, because he’s older, four years of his life unfolded without me. He was born in Uganda and almost immediately became a refugee baby. He was only around 9 months old when he came with my parents to Britain. Fleeing the fascist government, my mom and dad could only carry minimal possessions. My mother put some of her wedding jewelry in my brother’s diaper because it was something she could take across the borders without being searched. The government had taken all their money and property.

About 39 years later, we took a family trip to Uganda for my brother’s 40th birthday. By this time, I was living in the U.S., going to school in North Carolina. For Spring Break, I suggested we meet at London airport and fly to Uganda, to the place where my brother was born. We grew up hearing many stories about this town, from the tropical warms summer rain that would fall during the day to how mom and dad would sit outside eating mangoes. Often they would mix traditional Indian foods with East African ingredients. My mother told us of the Maasai people (a warrior tribe of Kenya), who would come on the trains and sell vegetables to local families. She told us about a water well my grandfather built with his own hands so people passing in the heat would have fresh water to drink.

In recent years, Raine and I have more or less grown out of our bickering and embraced our brotherly roots. On my last visit home, I went straight to the pub where he had set up a pop-up food stand. He came to cooking after having a lot of dissatisfying jobs. I had just come from visiting my old school teacher Mr. George. My brother came out with a dish—a South Indian-style Dosa curry—with some homemade sauces. I really wasn’t expecting it to be as good as it was. It not only looked good, but it tasted good as well, a sort of explosion of spices in the mouth. I was a little reluctant, but I had to compliment my brother. I noticed how he talked to everyone he cooked for. He had built relationships with people, and they weren’t just coming for his food; they were coming to see him.

If anyone was going to start a career in food, I thought it’d be me. I had certainly picked up the skills and the family recipes from my mother. But what I realized that day was that my brother had picked those things up as well.

A few weeks ago my brother entered in the finals of British Street Food awards, the largest street food competition in the world. He made it there by following the advice his then 10-year-old son, Jack, gave him three years ago: Follow your dreams. Jack suggested making food for people, because he could see that was something his dad loved doing. Wise words from such a young fella. (It started as that simple idea cooking food at the local pub, and built up from scratch.) Raine didn’t win the finals, but I’m incredibly proud of him for coming so far in less than three years. He now has one the best food trucks in the nation, recognized as one of the top 17 street food vendors in the country. He’s also a local champion for food cuisine, promoting fresh produce from local farms. He teaches prison inmates how to cook Indian food, and donates a portion of his proceeds to charities for children, one of my mother’s favorites. He still uses some of her recipes.

When I return from Europe, I’ll be making a meal for 100 diners for an event that supports local farmers in East Tennessee. In preparation, I plan to spend three days with my brother to learn some new dishes. Although Thanksgiving is of course a U.S. holiday, I can’t think of anything I’d rather do than spend it with my big brother, cooking, talking, reminiscing, and reconnecting. Family, community, and a sense of togetherness is something that’s just intrinsically tied to cooking, food and storytelling. They teach us about what we have in common—the things we share even when we think we are very different. They help us remember loved ones who we’ve lost. Food brings us together in so many ways.
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Kiran Singh Sirah


 

​Storytelling is, at its heart, a form of communication—one that has been helping people talk to one another for thousands of years. With the recent events surrounding Hurricane Irma, I had the opportunity to remember this once again. The video footage showing long lines of cars fleeing Florida in preparation of the hurricane was a painful sight, especially so soon after the devastation of Harvey in Texas (and nearly a year after the wildfires in Gatlinburg). As the son of refugees, I understand something about the pain of having to pick up and abandon your life on a moment’s notice.
 
In times like these, it’s important to not let hopelessness freeze your heart; more often than not, you’ll find that there’s something you have to contribute, whether it’s a donation, lending a hand, or simply lending someone an ear when they need to talk.

A friend, Ren Allen, and I were sharing a coffee when we had the idea to set up an Irma Evacuation Facebook group as a way for people to post rooms and other spaces they could share with evacuees. It was also a way that people could connect about providing services and supplies. Within 12 hours we had more than 300 members, and eventually more than 1,000 people would join. We had conceived of the Facebook group as a way for Northeast Tennessee to band together as hosts and helpers, but the effort quickly expanded to include parts of North Carolina, Southwest Virginia, Georgia, and Alabama.

As people heard about the group and shared it with people they knew, more than 150 rooms were offered up at no charge to evacuees. As the word about what we were doing spread, city leaders began to contact me to see how they could help. Many of them opened up their own homes.
 
I hosted some folks myself (friends I had met a couple of years ago, when I was giving a talk in south Florida), but of course for a lot of reasons that’s not a possibility for everyone. Fortunately, there were many other ways to contribute. Some people did laundry. Others made meals. Sometimes it was a matter of vetting requests and
facilitating info for people who were literally on the road. We helped one woman and her six rescue dogs find a place to stay in Alabama, for instance. It only took about 20 minutes to sort out—and she messaged us once she had arrived to let us know she was safe. We helped people find places for their pets, including a large pasture where some of the horses of Florida could rest and recover after their stressful journey north. It was a beautiful effort in a difficult moment—and it’s reassuring to know that, even at a time when this country is so divided politically, we can come together with the common goal of supporting our neighbors in need.
 
We had a Florida-based musician stranded here in Johnson City. He used the Facebook group to get in touch with other local musicians and secure a gig right on Main Street. (The group recommended everything from the venue to a vet for his dog). The community fell in love with him and vice versa, and I was pleased to meet a fellow Brit—he’s originally from the UK!—so far from home. He and my house guests came as my guests to attend a Storytelling performance. It really is a small world. We posted a sign in the lobby so that all evacuees knew they could attend a storytelling concert for free.
 
Soon after the commotion died down, we set up an event for volunteers and evacuees to meet and share stories as a way to get to know one another. Many only knew each other previously through the Facebook group. It helped strengthen the network in case we need to come together again as a resource in the future. But it also helped the evacuees keep their sense of home alive—something I remember being important to my own family when they were displaced, and to me, as a child born in England, so I could learn about where my family came from.
 
When I studied folklore as a graduate student, one of the things I focused on was different ideas of “home.” I learned a lot about the specific challenges of displacement by working with people experiencing homelessness and collecting their stories. One thing I learned was that, unlike photos, heirlooms, and other sentimental objects, stories can travel with us wherever we go. Stories offer a sense of home that can be recreated anywhere, at any time.
 
I also learned more unexpected lessons about how our sense of home intersects with survival—and how for people who lose their sense of place, it becomes even more important to perform a sense of home by talking about the people and the events that made it so special. Because of the success of our Hurricane Irma evacuee efforts, my wheels have been turning about possibilities for bigger projects that leverage digital storytelling as a means of organizing disaster relief and helping people make new connections with one another in the wake of similar tragedies. In a few weeks, I’ll be presenting on the role that storytelling plays in global peacebuilding at the United Nations, in Geneva. I know there will be representatives from a variety of humanitarian organizations like Red Cross, Red Crescent, as well as protection agencies like the Centers for Disease Control present. Storytelling and social media offer simple, effective, and sometimes surprising opportunities to come together as individuals and communities in times of distress.
 
Kiran Singh Sirah
 

In 2012, a few years ago before I came to East Tennessee, my brother, my father and I took a trip to Uganda to celebrate my brother’s 40th birthday. It had been 40 years since my parents were expelled and became refugees to the UK in 1972. My brother was just a baby at the time, and he had never visited the place of his birth. It was also a chance to visit the place where my late mother had grown up. I had never been to Uganda, but I’d heard so many stories about it from my family.

We all met up at London Heathrow airport and flew out together. As we drove on the road between Kampala and Torono, the town on the Kenya/Uganda border where my mother grew up, where my parents were married, and where my brother was born. We stopped at a side street market in search of Uganda red chilies, and I noticed a sign above the storefront that read “Every meal is a story.” I took a photo of it so I could remember that moment.

At that time, I was already in the United States studying folklore in North Carolina. I had started to learn how the traditions of our everyday lives—the foods, rituals, beliefs, and other cultural markers we use to express our values and identities—tell the world about who we are and where we come from. Like the oral tradition, the food tradition (or “foodways,” as we’d say in folklore studies), really does traffic in narrative. It’s like the sign I saw in Uganda said: Every meal is a story.

When we finally arrived in Tororo, an older Ugandan gentleman came up to us and said, “Welcome home.” That was such a wonderful moment. He was someone who obviously knew why we were there. He had probably grown up alongside many of the Indian migrants that first came to East Africa to help build the railroads—as my family did when it was a British colony.

In Britain, I grew up in a powerful tradition that frequently involved cooking with our large extended family. Often we’d have hundreds gathered to prepare and cook. Many of us from different families would gather for all types of events, including Diwali, Eid, Christmas, weddings and funerals.
My mother was my primary teacher in everything from art to cooking. She’d invite me to join her as she prepared the meals in the kitchen—a lesson that was always accompanied with family stories from our heritage.

I’d cut up the onions and tomatoes. Once the main tomato masala base was made, my mum would take a small scoop, put it onto bread, and ask me to taste it to see if it needed any salt or added spices. I was honored to be her chief taster. She’d repeat the spices like a poem: Haldi, Lune, Mitch, Masala. That was the order of the primary spices that should go into the base curry. It had a ring to it.
Later, I learned about cooking from my dad. For some years my mother was ill, and spent time in hospital. My dad would prepare a crockpot so us boys had something to eat when we got home. He said that every man needs to learn to cook in case the time came we needed to look after ourselves and cook for others.

When my mother passed away at a young age, my aunties would often prepare homemade meals and freeze them for us to reheat. After a while, I asked them to stop—not because I wasn’t grateful, but because I wanted my family and especially my dad to have the smell of home cooking being prepared. It was the smell of these foods that warmed the house, and the stories that accompanied the cooking that made a house a home. I took over the role of my mother and cooked for my older brother and dad. I’d call them daily to see what they wanted to eat when they got home.

As an 18-year-old, I spent some time with my grandmother in northern India. Every day she’d get us kids to wake up early and clean the entire house from top to bottom. Then she’d call out to me in Punjabi to make tea. My job was to make milky chai tea for everyone, and we’d all sit out on the veranda drinking it. Later she’d spent the entire afternoon preparing food. I’d watch her as she cut up spinach leaves to perfection, and listen to her tell the stories of our grandparents and the struggle for independence that was taking place when she was a child. In the evenings we’d watch as she’d cook on a clay over fire on the veranda roof top. The smell was incredible, almost sweet and peaty. Cow dung was often used as the fuel to burn the fire—a smell that is familiar in many rural parts of the world. I’ve smelled the same smell in Ireland, in the mountains of North Carolina, and now in East Tennessee.

Since I moved here a few years ago, I began to learn how to grow my own food thanks to the friends I’ve made. The first batch of tomatoes I got to grow from seeds to fruit, I made a large batch of Indian Punjab sauce and packed it up in small mason jars. I put them out on my front porch and invited my neighbors to come and take them. They were all gone within a few hours.

Since I travel a lot, it’s difficult to maintain a backyard garden. So I purchased two local allotments where a friend teaches local high school youth how to grow their own vegetables. I received a small box of these vegetables every week delivered to my front porch—a win-win arrangement!
Recently a friend who runs a regional non-profit food initiative and I cooked up the idea to make an Appalachian-style curry community dinner as a fundraiser for local farms. It became a community effort, with kids and farms involved. A number of the young apprentice chefs joined me in the kitchen to prepare a meal for 150 people. These high school culinary students said it was their first time trying or cooking a curry. It was a real pleasure to invite them into the kitchen. Now I had my own crew of chief tasters. As we worked, I shared stories with them about my home and the years I’d spent cooking.

They also told me about why they are passionate about cooking themselves. Austin said for him it was so that he can learn how to survive on his own. Cooking was building his confidence. Aaron said that his favorite food was burgers, but now that he’s learned to cook a traditional curry base, he wouldn’t mind trying to make curry burgers.

I taught them my mother’s spice mantra: Haldi, Lune, Mitch, Masala. They loved it.

That evening, along with the support of my young helpers and a friend of mine who’s a chef—Seelye Coombs of Jonesborough very own Boone Street farmers’ market—we shared and dished out our first Appalachian curry dinner in sight of Buffalo mountain, which overlooks the community where I live. It had all the same base ingredients that would go into a traditional curry, but we added things like okra, carrots, sweet potato, eggplants, and other vegetables that had been grown locally. We named this a Mountain Masala. It was a hit.

Like our stories, food is something we can share to build common ground and to connect with one another. Whatever’s going in to the world, we can invite a neighbor and friend or even someone who has a very different view of the world to share a meal and break bread. In the Sikh tradition, we consider serving food to others and siting down to eat a meal with others as one of the highest forms of prayer. On some level, that’s a tradition that crosses all faiths and cultural backgrounds. Having worked on various peacebuilding efforts, I often ask participants to tell me stories about food. Again, I remember my sign: Every meal tells a story. I’ve always liked how each day—breakfast, lunch, and dinner—has a beginning, a middle, and an end.

With everything that’s going on in our world, one of the simplest, and most powerful, things I believe we can do is simply to enjoy a meal with a friend or even a stranger. Whether you’re breaking bread or sharing a curry, it’s one of the best times to share a story.
This past week was our first inaugural Appalachian curry dinner. But I have a feeling we’ll be doing this next year, and for years to come.
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Kiran Singh Sirah

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