Introduction: Becoming Pani Puri.

“You’re gonna love pani puri.” Says Lavanya, my thoughtful and brilliant roommate. She sits by me as I draft out my first blog post. While she sorts through whatever “flip flops” are (I thought those went on your feet, but apparently that’s a computer engineering thing), I am typing and deleting drafts for what would be the first post on my blog that would be on a website I have yet to create.

When I was little, India was portrayed in the media in a one-dimensional way. I had watched The Little Princess, which offers a biased Western perspective on India as a faraway land of spices and tigers. It was the scene of exploration for an Englishman seeking riches. It always felt like the backdrop for a white explorer's growth and understanding of the world, and it was evident as I watched their wonder through the TV screen as they gazed upon statues of deities so foreign to a marble depiction of Lady Fatima or a saint.

I also understood India as a land where people are hungry. Sometimes I would zone off in church and read the brochures nestled between the Bibles in the pews. I remember seeing one asking for donations to provide food thousands of miles away. A woman in a sari, clutching her child while staring at the missionary’s camera, was plastered on the front. This was the version of India that I knew. Land of spice. Land of tigers. Land of the hungry.

And that is all that I believed India to be.

I never seriously considered traveling there. I always thought it might be fun to visit for a week, to see the beautiful attire and try the food, but it wasn’t the first country I would plan a trip to.

Strangely enough, I came to know India in Iowa. When I started college at Iowa State.

I met my other roommate, Mahathi, by chance at a calculus help session. And we have been friends ever since.

Through my friends, students, mentors, and colleagues, a new narrative was written for me through storytelling over chai and chats over biriyani.

India was older than I could understand. Although America had a rich and vibrant indigenous community that existed far before our nation was established, the land that we recognize today as India is saturated with history that tells the story of humanity itself. And something I began to recognize consistently was the spice. The flavor and dedication that are intertwined with their food.

Spice to me is the stuff in Dune. Or maybe the paprika my mom put on popcorn that I thought tasted super strong. To be fair, my preferences as a kid were limited to cheese, bread, and pickles.

But I found a new definition of spice when I had the chance to mentor students from India at the Global Youth Institute in 2025.

Spice is a warm hug. Spice is the alone time you so desperately needed after a long day. Spice is seeing your dog after being away at college.

Spice is comfort.

Food, for these students, was nourishment for not just their body but their souls.

Food should be enjoyed. After studying biochemistry for two years, one thing stuck with me. The food you eat is quite literally who you are in the future. It is broken down, reconstructed, and fashioned into the sugars and proteins that make up who you are. Neurogenesis requires fat. “Fat” was a word I used to recoil at, but it quite literally gives you the ability to exist. You truly are what you eat in a sense.

And yet, people are starving. When someone starves, they are denied the ability to regenerate themselves. When people are starved, they are stripped of humanity and stripped of identity. They are denied the ability to remake themselves on a molecular level. And people still think food shouldn’t be a human right.

Norman E. Borlaug understood this more than anyone.

That idea always comforted me. I am always made anew with what I eat. I am never static; there is always movement within me, and there is always another cell taking another’s place. I am forever growing and changing.

Let me get back to the subject.

I cannot wait to become pani puri.

(This will be me in a month or so after eating pani puri)

Not literally, of course. The complexity of the Krebs cycle will make sure of that, but the nourishment of that food will stick with me, one bite at a time.

This is how I now know India. Not through a westernized film, or through sad and slightly pessimistic brochures in church, but through flavor. Through color flying through the air at festivals, through warm chai in the afternoon shared with friends or even strangers, and through tasting the food that so many people cherish as comfort.