This was Smrithi’s first visit to Sri Lanka since 1983. Neither of them had ever spoken about that terrifying night when the ashes of people and homes billowed into the sky like black storm clouds. Dhara wouldn’t talk of it now; there was so much else—so much more—she wanted to say, if she dared.

Together they faced the narrow stretch of beach. The ocean was advancing, gradually eating at the boundaries of the island. The broken granite boulders on the sand’s edge couldn’t hold it back forever.

‘Colombo has some excellent restaurants, you know,’ Dhara said.

‘I know, mami. I just thought we could sit on the beach and eat kadalai,’ Smrithi replied, smiling at the chickpea vendor. He shuffled over, hobbling under the weight of his steel basin, brimming with freshly boiled chickpeas. He set it down in the sand.

‘How many?’ he asked in Tamil, wiping his hands on his sarong before retying it quickly.

‘Two, thank you,’ Dhara replied. The man took a square of newspaper from the basin and deftly twisted it into a cone. He scooped the chickpeas into it, squeezed juice from a tired looking lime, and finished it with a generous sprinkling of chilli powder. He swirled the cone three times without spilling a chickpea, and brandished the delicacy, properly seasoned, towards Smrithi.

‘This looks great.’ She inhaled.

Dhara laughed. ‘We could make a real Sri Lankan out of you yet.’

‘Thank you, I’d like to be a local with you,’ Smrithi replied, throwing more chickpeas into her mouth.

Dhara flinched. ‘Tonight I’m taking you to Shri Balakrishna’s,’ she said quickly. ‘They make the best vegetarian lamprais in the city. They use soya curry instead of any meat. It’s delicious, almost as good as your mother’s.’

‘My mother’s?’ Smrithi asked, coughing on her food. ‘My mother makes lamprais?’

‘Yes,’ Dhara replied, patting her daughter’s back hard. ‘She used to make amazing lamprais. Her flavours were complementary and complex, but then she’d make one of the lamprais curries a little edgy, a little contradictory, just to shake things up.’

‘She never told me! She’s never made it for us. No one makes their own lamprais in Sydney, we buy it from the Sri Lankan caterers.’

‘Your mother has many talents she doesn’t boast about,’ Dhara replied. ‘There’s a reason no one makes lamprais; they require skill, patience and meticulous attention to detail.

‘You need to make four or five curries—the meat, the fish cutlet, seeni sambol, prawn blachan, fried plantains, spiced rice—it’s endless. And if that hasn’t exhausted you, you need to wrap individual portions of rice and curries in a banana leaf and steam it.’

‘I can’t believe Amma used to make it. Why did she stop?’ Smrithi shook her head.