I. Mini Scientist
The first time I baked, I was probably ten.
I remember hovering near my mom in the kitchen: not fully confident, not fully allowed, but curious. There were bowls, measuring cups, eggs that had to be cracked without shell fragments, flour that dusted everything like snowfall.
It felt like science.
Like I had elements at my disposal, butter, sugar, heat, time. And if I followed the sequence correctly, something would transform.
I didn’t grow up thinking cooking was something daughters had to do. In hindsight, that was privilege. At ten, I didn’t know that. I just knew it felt strange and magical that I could create something tangible.
I didn’t think children could create things that other people consumed.
That first cake felt like a revelation.
Magic, once discovered, is difficult to unsee.
II. If You Bake, You Clean
My mom had one rule:
“If you bake, you clean.”
There was no artistic exemption clause.
Somewhere between licking batter off a spoon and scrubbing cake tins at 11 PM, I learnt that creation carries responsibility. That you don’t just get applause; you also get the dishes.
Baking slowly became my quiet love language.
Birthdays.
Bad days.
Exams.
“Just because.”
I realised very early that people feel deeply seen when you make something for them. It’s different from buying a gift. It says: I gave you my time. I measured and waited and watched the oven light for you.
There is intimacy in that.
And then there was Dhanvi. At one of our massive school bake sales, he would grab my cupcakes and say, “Frost them more. Like, more.” He loved frosting to a ridiculous degree. So I would pile it on with absurdly generous swirls that defied structural stability.
That memory lives somewhere soft inside me.
The excess frosting.
The laughter.
The quiet joy of giving someone exactly what they wanted.
III. Two Hundred Cupcakes & Something Bigger
High school bake sales were a different level of chaos.
Two hundred.
Three hundred cupcakes.
Production line mode.
I would take days off during exam season to bake. Imagine that: sitting in the kitchen with my textbooks open, timers going off every twelve minutes, trays rotating in and out like clockwork.
The thrill was deafening.
But what made it transformative was what the money did.
Those funds went to fee support. To bonuses for our staff. To tangible impact I didn’t fully intellectually grasp but deeply felt.
The day my board exam results came out, we were also distributing funds from one of those sales. I remember seeing my marksheet on that website that always crashes.
And then looking at the envelopes. And for the first time in my very achievement-oriented life, my marks felt… small. Not irrelevant. Just small.
I didn’t know it then, but that was probably the first seed of impact being planted quietly inside me.
IV. The Almost Culinary School Phase
After school, baking turned experimental.
Tarts.
Cookies.
Different flavour profiles.
Late-night research on culinary institutes.
There was a brief, real moment where I considered it seriously.
But I’ve always been “the high achiever.”
The one who does the intellectually prestigious thing.
And somewhere in that narrative, baking felt like a deviation. So I didn’t choose it.
But I didn’t abandon it either.
At Ashoka, the baking club became my middle ground. And that’s where something else clicked:
Food gathers. Of all the events on campus, baking events sold out.
The kitchen would turn into organized chaos: flour everywhere, people shouting instructions, synchronized movements that only exist when many hands work toward one edible outcome.
Food wasn’t just creation anymore. It was community.
V. The First Oven That Was Mine
When I set up my first home, a guest house in Kerala, I was irrationally insistent that our microwave must have an oven setting.
It felt non-negotiable.
I baked there too. Not consistently. Not perfectly. But enough to feel that child in me breathe.
There’s something deeply empowering about baking in a space that is yours.
Not your mother’s kitchen.
Not a school event.
Not a club.
Yours.
VI. The Lucknow Gap
Then I moved to Lucknow.
Tiny kitchen. No oven. No real space. And I didn’t immediately realise what was missing.
But this weekend in Muscat, when I baked again, for a family friend’s birthday, something clicked.
It took barely an hour and a half. There were technical hiccups. I solved them.
My mom was beside me, steady and familiar.
And I realised:
This is a muscle I have.
And this is a thread I’ve been following my entire life. When she said the cake was good, I felt that warmth again.
Not pride. Something softer. The joy of having made someone feel special.
VII. “Why Don’t You Bake For Us?”
There’s a funny phenomenon when you tell people you love baking.
The first reaction is almost always: “Oh! Then why haven’t you baked for us?”
It’s said jokingly. But it carries something deeper.
Baking is demanded because it feels intimate. And sometimes that makes me feel warm.
Sometimes it makes me feel guilty.
Because I can’t bake for everyone. Because I’ve lived in cities without ovens. Because time runs out.
But what that reaction confirms is this: Food carries weight.
When someone cooks for you, it lands differently. Every time someone has made something for me: a meal, a dessert, even chai, I’ve felt seen.
And every time I’ve done it for someone else, I’ve felt that same quiet exchange.
It’s never just food.
It’s:
I thought of you. I waited for you. I measured this for you.
VIII. Of All The Things
I don’t know what my career will look like in ten years. I don’t know which city I’ll live in. I don’t know which versions of me will harden and which will soften.
But this weekend reminded me of something clear: Of all the things I might let go of in my life, this is not one of them.
Baking is how I learnt magic.
It’s how I learnt responsibility.
It’s how I learnt impact.
It’s how I learnt community.
It’s how I learnt giving.
And maybe, most importantly,
it’s how I return to myself.
The Devil is in the Dee-tails :) 
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