Spiced chicken for the soul and something for the stomach

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I rise at dawn and before the coffee is brewed I have ground the spices for the day, picturing myself pounding each seed and root for the flavours I fancy.
After coffee, back in bed, I consider dough for parathe; indeed, I consider spicing potato and mashing it for alu ke parathe. But we are hungry and cannot wait. I pour cornflakes and make porridge for the baby then load the dishwasher.
I mentally unclip the tiffin box and fill each container with a little of many varied but perfectly balanced dishes: a little sabzi, a dal for gravy, rice, a folded roti with a dab of pickle, even a simple crunchy carrot one, fritters for a surprise. I know how it's all done; I've read the recipes a hundred times. The photos are gorgeous. After a sandwich lunch we collapse into naps.
There, head on pillow, I hope that the afternoon stillness will be long: that the baby will sleep a little more and my son's playtime will be peaceful and that today, at last, I might make something special for our evening meal. All I have to do, when I get up, is mix a marinade that will permeate the chicken with deep flavour. I will finely mince garlic and ginger. I will sautee onions - mounds of them - in ghee. (Must pop out to buy some soon). I will seal a lid with fresh dough over layers of steaming rice and spiced chicken. Oh and there will be strands of saffron bathed in warm milk for the garnish. I will pick almonds and sliver and roast them, I will go to the quay and barter for pistachios off the boat from Constantinople. I will float up in the clouds of steam and be transported to Kashmir and harvest orange blossom and rose petals to scatter over great platters of this biriyani. Thence I will rise above the mountains to the pomegranate orchards of the Fergana Valley. Let the seeds rain down over our feast.
And just when I am considering to whom I will send plates of this food - which poor, lonely or hungry neighbours need feeding - the baby awakes. She needs a feed. My boy's concentration has reached its limits too. We find new games, lay out a puzzle, cut and stick but really they just need to get out and go to the park. The spice cupboard stays shut.
Home, and I am glad that tinned chick peas are a food too.They taste fine with tinned tomatoes and the children love a bit of yogurt on the side. The scent of something actually cooking - an onion, albeit roughly chopped, frying and rice steaming - always smells better than the fragrance of what is not. And something actually cooked fills the stomach something wonderful. 

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