Mothers and Memories with Padma Lakshmi: The Moth Podcast

Summary

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The Moth Podcast – “Mothers and Memories with Padma Lakshmi”

Release date: May 8, 2026
Podcast Host: Padma Lakshmi
Featured Storytellers: Mary Mack, Parvati Anant Narayan, Nikesh Shukla

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Episode Overview

This Mother’s Day themed episode, hosted by Padma Lakshmi, weaves together three deeply personal, vivid stories about motherhood and the memories mothers and their children share. Each live Moth story explores a unique angle on the parent-child bond—through humor, perseverance, grief, and love. Padma ties these tales together with her own reflections on inheriting memories, legacies, and realizing what truly endures between parent and child.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

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1. Introduction & Episode Framing

Padma Lakshmi’s Opening Remarks

• Welcomes listeners and introduces the Mother’s Day episode theme: the complex, enduring bond between mothers and their children, and the shared memories and legacies that persist as time passes.
• Sets up the expectation for “more than just stories of motherhood”—but tales about “the memories mothers and children share and the legacy we leave behind once our kids grow up.” ([02:59])

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2. Story 1 — Mary Mack: “Selling My Mother’s Burial Plots”

Live from Cincinnati Mainstage
[Begins: 03:46]

Story Summary

• Mary’s elderly mother still resides in the woods where Mary grew up, without Internet access. Mary is frequently enlisted to help with uncomfortable online tasks, often without preamble.
• Codependency and Family Duty: Mary’s “overzealous” drive to help is driven by an urge to cheer her mother from depression—something she learned in therapy is codependency.
• Comedic Attempt at Selling Burial Plots:
  • Her mother, while searching for yarn, finds old burial plot deeds and asks Mary to sell them online.
  • Mary, armed with only partial information and an overactive helper instinct, embarks on a convoluted, often hilarious quest to monetize these “full sizer” plots for her mom’s benefit.
  • She tries Craigslist, Facebook Marketplace with cheeky captions (“Looking for your forever home. Quiet neighbors, Minneapolis adjacent”), and even hard-copy flyers—finding only failure.
• Deeper Message:
  • Mary realizes she can’t control everything for her mom, and that letting go is as much an act of love as holding on.
  • As she relinquishes the obsessive project, she reflects on her growth regarding boundaries and self-care.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “She’ll call me up and there’s not a hello… ’Hey, get on your hand computer and look me up. Why is my cat licking all its fur off?’” — Mary Mack ([03:46])
• “In therapy, I learned that this is called codependency and it’s not a good thing. But I am really good at it.” ([04:37])
• “When you’re scrolling Facebook Marketplace, you’re not looking for graves… you’re looking for whimsical items like vintage wallpaper or a fog machine.” ([08:50])
• “I have mental and emotional tools. I have read books, I have paid for therapy on a sliding scale. Okay, I don’t have to get buried in the plot my mom accidentally bought in the 1960s and neither do you, if it ever comes up.” ([16:39])
• Memorable closing line: “That being said, if you are looking for your forever home…and plots three and five are next to each other, by the way…please find me. I’ll make you a great deal.” ([16:53])

Key Segment Timestamps

• 03:46 – Mary’s mother’s quirky tech requests
• 04:37 – Therapy and codependency
• 07:35 – Discovery of the burial deeds and salesplan
• 12:20 – Marketplace marketing mishaps
• 16:20 – Letting go, embracing boundaries

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3. Interlude: Padma Lakshmi’s Reflection

[17:06]

• Padma shares a personal memory about her own mother insisting she wear an ornate gold necklace for her wedding, illustrating the deep emotional tethers of family artifacts.
• “I still have that necklace and it’s burning a hole in my safe… but I can’t [sell it].”

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4. Story 2 — Parvati Anant Narayan: “Swimming Through Crisis”

Live from Los Angeles Mainstage
[Begins: 18:26]

Story Summary

• A Mother’s Ordeal: Parvati’s 15-year-old son, visiting family in India, is diagnosed with lymphoma, prompting Parvati to drop everything and fly across continents, overwhelmed by fear and uncertainty.
• A Healing Routine: At an apartment near the hospital, her son notices a pool and encourages her—who never learned to swim as a child—to use it daily amid the emotional turmoil as a grounding activity.
• Intertwined Struggles: The pool becomes both a literal and symbolic space: as Parvati awkwardly learns to float and then swim (with her son encouraging her from their balcony), she’s also navigating her own panic and helplessness during his treatment.
• After the Surgery: Even as her son recovers, Parvati grapples with anxiety, especially when he isn’t on the balcony watching her swim. The ritual becomes an anchor through uncertainty and fear.
• Resolution: After returning to the US, Parvati finally succeeds in swimming unaided at another pool, cheered by her son’s laughter—both changed by the ordeal, but strengthened in their bond.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “We’re six hours into a 14 hour plane ride and in all that time I haven’t stopped crying… since my sister’s phone call the night before.” — Parvati Anant Narayan ([18:26])
• “He looks at me and he says, ‘Ma, it’s a swimming pool. You can finally learn how to swim.’” ([20:34])
• “Here he was going through what was probably the most difficult thing in his life, and he was there taking care of me.” ([21:55])
• “But this time, this time I kicked. I kicked and I plunged my arms out of that pool… and I propelled myself forward. A few strokes later, I came up sputtering and gasping. And I heard loud laughter. It was my son… he said, 'Ma, look, you’re doing it. You’re swimming.'” ([29:49])

Key Segment Timestamps

• 18:26 – The fateful phone call and flight to India
• 20:34 – Moving to apartment, son’s encouragement about the pool
• 23:35 – Trauma of medical decisions
• 25:55 – Establishment of mother-son “swimming” ritual
• 29:49 – Swimming breakthrough and emotional release

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5. Interlude: Padma Lakshmi on Unexpected Family Memories

[30:15]

• Padma relates a story about her own struggles with swimming, and her daughter’s loving, humorous school essay evoking these memories.
• “The stuff our children actually remember isn’t the stuff we planned—it’s these small moments you never expected would be important.”

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6. Story 3 — Nikesh Shukla: “Recipe for Home”

Annual London Mainstage Performance
[Begins: 33:07]

Story Summary

• Sudden Loss: Nikesh’s mother passes away just weeks after a cancer diagnosis, their relationship remembered as both deeply loving and full of “bickering all the time about really small things.”
• Mourning Through Movement: He moves from his London childhood home to Bristol, lost in grief, and finds his new place foreign and unwelcoming—“It smells like it belongs to someone else.”
• Home as Memory: A year after his mother’s death, he returns to his silent, frozen childhood home; the only sign of life is his father alone listening to Bollywood songs.
• The Power of Food: Nikesh stumbles upon Tupperware in the freezer containing his mother’s “handwa,” and the house is instantly filled with the familiar, comforting smell of his childhood kitchen.
• Reconciling Regret: Regrets never learning to cook from his mother—something she always encouraged. He finds her old shopping lists, searches for the recipe, and attempts to make the dish, resulting in a chaotic, smoky kitchen fire.
• Grief and Acceptance: Amid the disaster, surrounded by smoke and tears, he finds the real connection: “Somewhere… there is the smell of onions and garlic and ginger and chili. And my house smells like my mum’s kitchen. And for a second, just for a second, it starts to feel like home.” ([44:15])

Notable Quotes & Moments

• “Me and my mum, we had a very difficult relationship. We both loved each other intensely and the only way that we could really show our love for each other was by bickering all the time about really small things.” — Nikesh Shukla ([33:17])
• “Seeing that ink on the page, that ink came from a pen that was connected to her fingers, that was connected to her arms, that was connected to her brain… it makes me crumble.” ([37:00])
• “When someone dies and you romanticize them… you forget about the really mundane things, like when they wrote shopping lists, or when they made handwa.” ([37:40])
• “And I look up because there’s a smell in the air. And somewhere amidst the smell of smoke and burnt sesame seeds and mustard seeds… there is also the smell of onions and garlic and ginger and chilli. And my house smells like my mum’s kitchen. And for a second…it starts to feel like home.” ([44:15])

Key Segment Timestamps

• 33:07 – News of mother’s passing, move to Bristol
• 35:11 – Return to childhood home, haunted by absence
• 36:27 – Finding mother’s food and her handwriting
• 39:00 – The first attempt at making handwa and ensuing disaster
• 44:15 – Grief, food, and fleeting comfort

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Closing Reflections

Padma Lakshmi [44:32]

• Observes how “food can bring us closer to the people we love, even when they can’t actually be with us,” illustrating how ordinary habits and sensory memories become acts of remembering and honoring those we love.

Final Message

• Padma closes by urging listeners: “Don’t forget to give your mom a call.”

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Memorable Quotes from Padma Lakshmi

• “The stuff our children actually remember isn’t the stuff we planned—it’s small moments that you never expected would be important.” ([30:36])
• “Food can bring us closer to the people we love, even when they can’t actually be with us.” ([44:32])

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Structuring the Episode

Story Order:

1. Mary Mack – Humor and codependency in the parent-child bond
2. Parvati Anant Narayan – Resilience and connection in crisis
3. Nikesh Shukla – Grief, memory, and recipes as legacy

Each story is intercut with personal and insightful commentary by Padma Lakshmi, adding context and connection.

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Useful for Listeners

• Themes: Navigating parental expectations, letting go, ritual as healing, how everyday actions and artifacts become legacy, and the profound way ordinary memories outlast even loved ones’ earthly presence.
• Tone: Equal parts heartfelt, humorous, vulnerable, and wise—capturing The Moth’s signature embrace of lived experience and authentic storytelling.
• Standout Moments: The buried plot hustle, a poolside promise kept and re-imagined, and a kitchen catastrophe giving rise to the “smell of home.”

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For those who haven’t listened:
This episode offers a moving, multi-dimensional portrait of motherhood—the difficult, funny, and bittersweet—illuminating just how the small, idiosyncratic moments become our most cherished memories.

Transcript

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[Padma Lakshmi]

Hi there and welcome to the Moth. I'm Padma Lakshmi, a Moth Storyteller writer and the creator and host of America's Culinary Cup. I was also honored to be the Moth Storyteller of the year in 2020. I'm also a mother and I'm excited to host this special Mother's Day themed episode. The three stories you'll hear are all about motherhood, but they're about more than that. They're about the memories mothers and their children share and the legacy we leave behind once our kids grow up. Our first storyteller is Mary Mack who told this on stage at a sold out mainstage show in Cincinnati. Here's Mary live at the mall.

[Mary Mack]

My 83 year old mother still lives in the woods where I grew up. She does not have the Internet but she's heard of it and she will ask me to do very uncomfortable things for her online. Sometimes just tasks she gives me. She'll call me up and often there's not a hello. It'll just go like hey, get on your hand computer and look me up. Why is my cat licking all its fur off? Or why don't you get online there and see how much booze can I have with this new medication. And I want to do these things for my mom. It's important for me to help her because she has not had an easy life. Her health is bad, money has always been tight and just seeing my mom go from depressed to happy for an hour is a gift. Plus, my dad had enough nerve to pass away before I had any means to help him out. So consequently I am a little overzealous at wanting to help my mother. For example, I will pay somebody to mow my yard and then I will drive a four hour round trip to mow my mother's yard. Yeah, in therapy I learned that this is called codependency and it's not a good thing, but I am really good at it. The therapist has tried her best. She has given me assignments. Read the book Codependency no More by Melody Beatty. Hey, how about we make A hand drawn poster of the tips of how not to be codependent. And I remember going home and digging in my junk drawer for colored pencils. And I squiggled out guidelines like, detach with love. Put your own air mask on first. Boundaries are good. And I hung it on my wall. And I mostly forgot about it. A few years ago at Thanksgiving, I went to visit my mom. Just me and her. And my mom pulls out of her worn out woolly bathrobe an official looking trifold document. Pearlescent. It had mildew stains on it. It smelled like the basement. She says, here, I want you to sell these for me. I'm like, well, what are they? It's a couple burial plots I'm not gonna use anymore.

[Padma Lakshmi]

Oh, boy.

[Mary Mack]

Yep. That is not enough information. And also too much information. My mom didn't even realize she owned these plots. She didn't remember she was in the basement looking for yarn and she came across the deed. And she doesn't need them because she doesn't live in this town where the cemetery is located anymore. In fact, she's never lived in this town. And now she lives even farther away, two hours away. So she also realized that they'd be worth way more than when she bought them in the 1960s, you know, almost 60 years ago. And then I envisioned myself selling these plats and returning home a hero. Like, come on, Jan, we're going to pay off all your bills and then we're going to the seafood buffet at the casino. So she says, all right, get on Gregs list and sell them for me. Then maybe there is a Gregslist. And then she adds, unless you want to use them, I don't live in this town either. And a bit of fear crept into my head. What if I don't sell these? Will I have to get buried in Coon Rapids? Because I know me and I know my codependency, and that is something I would do. But then I also remembered I had already had a little bit of success with online sales. The previous year, I had sold a camper awning on Facebook Marketplace. And after that transaction, I fashioned myself a businesswoman. I thought, you know, not everybody owns a camper, but everybody's gonna die, right? It's a built in market. So then I go home and I realize there are other challenges. It's just not a fun sale. When you're scrolling Facebook Marketplace, you're not looking for graves. You're looking for whimsical items like vintage wallpaper or labradoodles or A fog machine. Yeah. And I also noticed upon examination of the deed that these are full sizers. Oh, yes. Nobody's getting full sized buried anymore. Cremation is very popular. Full size buried is a production. They lay you out for display. But with cremation, it's easy. It's like, oh, let's forget this ever happened. Burn the evidence, you know. Yeah, But I'm in. I promised. You know, I read online that you need to take a picture of the item you are trying to sell on the Internet. And it turns out you cannot just Google Maps your way to the tranquility gardens, row 40, plots three and five. Oh, yeah, three and five. It got harder. Who is the creeper in plot four? But I'm in. I promised. So I just locate the cemetery in general and I find the cemetery office, which looks like every other suburban home that has sprouted up since she's bought these, you know, a beige vinyl sided split level ranch. And I go inside, the man brings out some paper maps. Nothing's online, just some charts and some maps. He unfolds them and he points to where he thinks these sites might be on the grounds. And he says, oh, nobody's gone in there for a while. And I'm like, what? Yeah, I know, because we've been hoarding them. Zus. And then he takes out a pricing sheet and he silently points to what these grave sites are worth. And my jaw dropped. It is thousands of dollars. And it reignites my desire to want to sell these things for my mother. I'm like, we're going to the seafood buffet twice. I can see it. So I go out there, I snap my photo. Don't even bother. You can just take a picture of a sad field anywhere.

[Padma Lakshmi]

Yeah.

[Mary Mack]

And then I get home and I figure, well, I'll put it on Craigslist. I put it in general sales because I didn't know. I had no idea. And I thought, oh, this photo, it's so depressing. I'm gonna really have to jazz it up with the ad copy if I want to turn heads, right? And so I captioned it. Looking for your forever home. Yeah. Thank you. Quiet neighbors, Minneapolis adjacent. And then I just sat back and waited for that sweet, sweet cemetery resale money to come rolling in. Two weeks went by, nothing. Three weeks went by, no word, nothing. I thought, you know, the cemetery guy said it could take a while. And I'm like, well, yeah, it took me a month to sell the camper awning, so this sounds. Seems normal. And then I changed the caption to be a little more respectful in case I offended anybody. And I wait, six months went by. Nobody, you know, and at that time somebody suggested, well, have you checked the spam box on your email? And I thought, oh no, probably dozens of people have died. And yeah, and they're all trying to contact me and it's in my junk mail. So I look and I there nothing. There's still nothing. Nobody. And then about a year in, after not hearing one word, I wake up in the morning having these little panics. I grew up poor. These are worth thousands of dollars. I cannot waste these sites. But this fear prompted me to up my game in marketing and I printed out hard copy flyers. I printed them and I drove to Coon Rapids again looking for bulletin boards. There are no bulletin boards in Coon Rapids, Minnesota. I had a long talk with a 19 year old grocery store manager about the benefits of bulletin boards for older people. Nobody cares. I took out a classified ad in the Penny Saver, that's a hard copy publication. And still nothing. Nothing. I failed. I did all that. And I know my mom will still love me even though I'm not a cemetery resale mogul. She doesn't probably even remember I'm trying to sell him. She's just crocheting her hats, living her life. But I feel horrible. I gave up basically. And then for me, when I give up, it's sometimes a good thing because my brain slows down. I think more calmly, I remember that how not to be codependent hand drawn poster on my wall. And I think, yeah, maybe I don't want to waste these burial plots, but I also don't want to waste all the work I've done on myself. Right? I have tools. I have mental and emotional tools. I have read books, I have paid for therapy on a sliding scale. Okay, I don't have to get buried in the my mom accidentally purchased in the 1960s and neither do you if it should ever come up. And this may seem like an obvious choice to most of you in here, but for me it's a big step. That being said, if you are looking for your forever home and plots three and five are next to each other, by the way, it's just a weird numbering system. We figured it out. If you're looking, please find me. I'll make you a great deal. Thank you.

[Padma Lakshmi]

That was Mary Mack. Mary's a voiceover actress and stand up comedy comedian from the upper upper Midwest. Which makes sense because not only was that story engaging, her delivery was impeccable. She plans to spend a good deal of the next year getting a book of her essays ready for the general public to hopefully enjoy. The cemetery plots are still for sale. Mary's wonderful story got me thinking about my own mom and the memories I have of her. When I got married at the ripe old age of 34, my mom insisted I wear this very ornate gold necklace. I'd never ever wanted to wear it before and I knew I'd never ever want to wear it afterwards. In fact, I didn't even want to wear that thing at my wedding. But I did because, you know, she's my mom and I guess it was her day too. I still have that necklace and it's burning a hole in my safe and with gold prices so high right now, I'm really itching to sell it, make myself something I'd really wear. But I can't. For now anyway. Our next story is from Parvati Anant Narayan, who told this at a Los Angeles mainstage. Here's Parvati live at the mall.

[Parvati Anant Narayan]

Are you okay, miss? The flight attendant asks and I can see why he's concerned. We're six hours into a 14 hour plane ride and in all that time I haven't stopped crying. Great big gulping sobs like I can't catch a breath. In fact, I hadn't stopped crying since my sister's phone call the night before asking me to get on that plane. A few months. A couple of Months prior, my 15 year old son had traveled to India from the United States, where we live, to visit my sister, his aunt and his grandparents. A couple of weeks before, he had started to feel really unwell. So some doctor's visits and tests revealed that my 15 year old son had lymphoma. He had cancer. And so I bid goodbye to to my husband and my daughter back home, not knowing when I would see them again and I boarded that plane. When the plane landed, my sister came out to meet me at the airport and right away we went to the hospital and there were further tests and further visits with the doctors. And the doctors they sat me down and they said it would not be possible or safe for my son at that moment to travel back to the United States safely for treatment. He had two liters of fluid that surrounded his heart and so the plane journey would not be advisable. They said that he would need surgery and chemotherapy right away and they would make the call after that. The doctors, they also asked if it would be possible for my son and I to move closer to the hospital because the commute would be quite hard on him. During treatments, I was utterly overwhelmed. How was I going to get through this? I thought to myself, how were we going to get through this? The next week, my son and I went to look at an apartment. The apartment was on the seventh floor of a 14 story building that was next to the hospital. And as we walked in, I took in the white tiled floors and the kitchen that felt a little bit too small. And my son, he threw open all the doors to the closets and the rooms, trying to decide which bedroom would be his. And as I stood there, I thought to myself, please God, please let this be a place of healing for us. I watched as my son slid the balcony door open in the apartment. And he turned around and he looked at me and he goes, ma, come see. So I go over to see what he's pointing at. And I look down and down from the balcony. On the grounds of this apartment complex is a great big, beautiful blue pool. And he looks at me and he says, ma, it's a swimming pool. You can finally learn how to swim. A little background here. As a child, I never really learned how to swim. As a teenager, I tried to take lessons and I managed to make it through too. The first time, the first day we went in and the instructor said to all of us who were there for the lessons, well, today I'm going to teach you how to float. Now, floating, that isn't swimming. You don't go anywhere. But it's useful, so let's start there. And so the instructor taught us to climb into the water. And I learned how to kick my feet off the floor of the pool and keep my back perfectly straight. My face was outside the water and I could look around, I could take a breath, and I thought to myself, well, this isn't so bad. So I went back the next day. On the second day, the instructor said, well, today we're going to actually start learning how to swim. And to do that, you have to put your face inside the water. I climbed into the pool and walked over to the edge and started to put my face under the water as the instructor told us to. And I was utterly overwhelmed. Water started rushing up my nose and into my ears and my eyes open, but I couldn't see two feet in front of me. And, you know, started to panic. My feet start lifting off the floor of the pool as my head goes in and I'm losing control and I think, hell, no. And I splashed out of that pool and I never went back. So I'd never really Learned how to swim. And here we were on the balcony, and my son looks up at me and he says, ma, promise me that if we rent this apartment that you'll go down there and swim every single day. Here he was, going through what was probably the most difficult thing in his life, and he was there taking care of me. So I looked up at him and I said, okay. I promise you I will. I'll go to that pool every single day. But you promised me that when I look up from the pool, you'll be sitting up here at this balcony so I can keep my eyes on you. He said, it's a deal. So we rented this apartment. And over the next few days, our routine went something like this. Every afternoon, my son would say, ma, it's time for you to go swim. And I'd say, okay. And I'd pick up my towel and I'd take the elevator down to the ground floor, walk out to the pool, put my towel aside, climb into the water. I'd kick my feet back the way I remembered how to, and I'd keep my back perfectly straight, and I'd train my eyes right over to that balcony. And my son would be sitting up there, and he'd wave down at me, and I'd wave up at him. And in this way, our days followed one after another until it was time for surgery. On the day of the surgery, the day before the surgery, I went to the hospital and had to go down into a basement area where there was a counter, and there was a medical assistant sitting there. And the medical assistant, he handed me a clipboard of forms. And he said, you'll need these when you go in to see the surgeon. So I took the forms with me, and I walked into the surgeon's office. And as I sat there, the surgeon started to explain to me what they would have to do during the surgery. The surgeon said he would need to insert a needle into the skin around my son's heart or the tissue around my son's heart to get the fluid out. And he said that anytime you do something like that, something invasive, like putting a needle into the heart, that there's a very real chance that the heart might just stop. There was a chance that my son might die. He wanted me to sign those forms to show him that I understood that these were the risks. I didn't understand. My mind went completely blank, and a great fear seized me. And I picked up those forms and shook my signature across the pages, and I handed the clipboard back to him. The next day, My son was wheeled in for surgery, and surgery went fine. He came out fine, and right away they had him go into chemotherapy. The chemotherapy ward had a series of beds, and there was a chair next to each bed. And while my son was there in his bed, I would sit next to him and hold his hand. And as the chemotherapy kind of flowed into his veins through the tubes in his arms, I'd sit there for hours holding his hand, never leaving his side. The nurses, they'd fuss at me, and they'd say, you have to go eat or drink something. Go to the cafeteria. And I resented them for this, because the only real control I had was to be there by my son's side. I did go to the cafeteria. I probably ate things and drank something. I don't really quite remember. I do remember getting these small cups of milky tea that were scaldingly hot. And they probably burned the roof of my mouth. But I gulped them down, and I'd rush right back to my son's side again. A few weeks of chemotherapy treatments, you know, later, the doctor said to us that now was a period of waiting and watching to see if my son had responded well enough for us to be able to go back home and presume treatments here. The doctor said we could be discharged from the hospital. So we went back to the apartment. As we walked into the apartment, I supported my son, who was feeling rather weak. We walked into his bedroom, and I helped him into his bed and pulled the covers over him and turned over and started to close the blinds so he could catch some sleep. And as I turned to leave the bedroom, I heard him say in a kind of quieter voice, ma. I turned around, and he said, we're back at the apartment. It's time for you to go swim. Yes. Yes, I said, I will. I picked up my towel and turned around and took that elevator like I had so many times before. Went to the bottom floor and walked over to the pool. I placed my towel by the side of the pool and climbed into the water. I kicked my feet back and kept my back straight. My head came out of the water and my eyes trained immediately over to that balcony. But my son wasn't sitting up there. Of course he's not up there, I thought. He's in bed. But a great wave of panic and fear seemed to rush over me. And the tears, they started flowing out the sides of my eyes and back into the water. And I thought to myself, what if? What if one day I look up at that balcony and never see my son again? I Climbed out of that pool that day and went back upstairs to my son. And we waited a couple more weeks to see how he would do. And the doctors, they met us and they said, he's well enough to take the flight back home. You can go back home to the United States and continue his treatments there. So we got on the plane to come back home and it was very nearly summer again. And summer rolled around and we were invited to go to a poolside. And my son and I went over and I changed into my bathing suit. And as I walked out, I saw him sitting on a lounge chair by the side of the pool, scrolling through his phone. And I looked at him. I started to climb into the water. It felt really cool. Climbed up over my waist and to my chest. And turning this time, I put my face under the water. Water started to rush up my nose and into my ears. I started to feel that familiar panic. I couldn't see two feet in front of me. My feet started to climb up off the ground and I felt the loss of control. But this time, this time I kicked. I kicked and I plunged my arms out of that pool and into the water and I propelled myself forward. A few strokes later, I came up sputtering and gasping. And I heard loud laughter. And I looked over and it was my son sitting by the side of the pool, just laughing his head off. He looked at me and he said, ma, look, you're doing it. You're swimming. Thank you.

[Padma Lakshmi]

That was Parvati. Anant Narayan Parvati currently teaches at the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. Her affiliation with the Moth began through the Moths education program, and the story you just heard was published in the Moths A Point of Beauty. When we reached out to her, she told us that the events of the story. Story took place over five years ago. My son, she says, who is a part of the story, is now wonderfully healthy and happy. I'm still a pretty bad swimmer, though. Being in the water has slowly evolved into a nerve wracking joy. I feel like the stuff our children actually remember isn't the stuff we planned. It's small moments that you never expected would be important. For instance, when my daughter was younger, I got a call from her third grade teacher who was moved enough to want to read me a paragraph my daughter had written in class about me going in the water. You see, like Parvati, I can't swim either. I'm terrible at it. I'm nervous. But my daughter loves the water. And the truth is I'm never going to be comfortable in the water. And my daughter knows that because she started the paragraph off with my mom is not the outdoorsy type. In fact, she's the kind of mom that will take you to Paris or to a Broadway show, but not to the ocean. She's right. After the break, a story about motherhood, food and memory. Back in a moment.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

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[Padma Lakshmi]

Welcome back. Our final story is a favorite from our archive. It's from Nikesh Shukla, who told this at our annual London mainstage. Here's Nikesh live at the Mall.

[Nikesh Shukla]

In 2010, I get a phone call from my cousin to tell me that my mum has died. And it comes as a bit of a shock because two weeks ago she had been perfectly healthy and then she got diagnosed with cancer and she passed away quite quickly. And grief is a funny thing because me and my mum, we had a very difficult relationship. We both loved each other intensely and the only way that we could really show our love for each other was by bickering all the time about really small things. I do what a lot of people do when they're faced with problems and I move to another city. I leave London, where I've grown up, and I move to Bristol to make a new home. London feels dead to me at this point because my mum is no longer there. Something has changed, something either within me or within my family, and I just can't be here anymore. The first time I walk into my new house in Bristol, the first thing I notice is that it stinks. It'd been occupied by some hippie students because it is Bristol. And so between growing pulses by the kitchen sink and burning incense and lots and lots of cats, it smells like it's a house that belongs to someone else. It definitely doesn't smell like my house. And I don't feel like I'm at home. I'm kind of caught in this in between. I'm mourning for my mum every single day. It feels like this heavy thing on top of me. And I moved cities and I don't know anyone and I just cannot wash the cat shit out of the carpet. And I go home to visit my dad. It's been a year since my mum died and there's one weekend where I go to visit him. And maybe it's because I've moved into a new space that I suddenly look at my childhood home with fresh eyes. But the moment I walk into my childhood home, it feels so familiar, and yet it feels different. Because in the year since my mum has died, the house has kind of been locked in stasis. You know, there's still laundry in the basket left over from when she was alive. Her clothes are still in the dirty clothes are still in the laundry basket. Her handbag is still at the bottom of the stairs. And while it looks like my childhood home, it also looks very clean, like nothing has been used. It feels like a museum. Like, say, there was a recreation of our house in the Table Modern or Tate Britain, which would be a weird thing to see. It feels like a museum to how things used to be. The kitchen looks unused. The only place that kind of has any life is the lounge area where my dad sits and listens to Bollywood songs really loudly. And I go upstairs and I'm lying on my childhood bed and something feels different this time. Time, because when I grew up, my bedroom was on top of the kitchen. And so I grew up with the sounds of Bollywood music, and I grew up with the sounds of the pressure cooker. And I grew up with the smell of onions and cumin and garlic and ginger and chilies in the air. You know, My mum was a firm believer in me and my sister removing our school uniforms every time we came home from school because she didn't want our clothes to smell like the food that she was cooking. She said, don't give the white people ammunition, just wear house clothes. And we respected that. But I was lying there and everything felt stale. It didn't feel like my home. And I'm already feeling unstuck because Bristol doesn't feel like my home. And here I am on my childhood bed in my childhood home, and this doesn't feel like my home. I'm hungry. And so I go downstairs and I look in the fridge and it's empty except for cans of Fosters and ketchup, because my dad is now a singleton and his fridge reflects that. And I open up the freezer, hoping for some inspiration, and I see some Tupperware boxes of my mum's food in there and I think, oh, my God, here is my mum's food. So I take out a Tupperware box, it's got hondua in it, which is like this really delicious savory pancake. And I put it in the microwave to defrost. And I'm standing there waiting for it to heat up. And something happens to that really stale, sterile room. It starts to smell like my mum's kitchen again. The spices are making the air come alive and it feels like my home. I eat the handwa and it's delicious as it always was. And I think, I need to learn how to make this hand war. I'm disappointed in myself because every, you know, I had years and years of my mum trying to get me to cook. I had years and years of my mum trying to teach me how to cook like her. When I left home, she tried to get me to learn how to make basic chana masala and paneer and stuff like that. And I was just like, well, I'll just come home and get leftovers, it'll be fine. And she was like, no, I won't always be around. And I was an idiot and I never learned. And I know that she was disappointed in that. And here I am now ruing those decisions and I really want to know how to make khandwar. I remember that my mum told me she got the recipe from Salamassi. I haven't seen salamsi since my mum's funeral. So knowing that my mum's handbag is at the bottom of the stairs, I go, I look through the handbag to find her address book so I can phone Salamasi and say, hey, Salamasi, can you teach me how to make houndor? And I find a stack of papers in my mum's handbag and I open one of them and it's a shopping list. It has things like Weetabix and onions and cumin powder and chili and cheese and really mundane things that you get for the big shop on it. But there's something about seeing my mum's handwriting that makes me crumble and makes me feel the heaviness crash over me again. Because seeing that ink on the page, that ink came from a pen that was connected to her fingers, that was connected to her arms. That was connected to her brain and seeing her handwriting and the smell of her food still lingering in the air, it feels like she's a real person. You know, when someone dies and you romanticize them, they become the really good things and the really, really bad things that used to wind you up and you. And you forget about the really mundane things, like when they wrote shopping lists or when they made Houndor. And I take one of those shopping lists home. I phone Sala Marcia. I get the recipe. When I get back to Bristol, I decide I'm going to do this shop. I'm going to do my mum's big shop, which is silly because we already have cheese and we already have Weetabix, but I feel like I need to do this. So I go to the shop and I buy all the things that are on the list, making sure that I also add in things that I need to make Gwandol. And I go home and I'm looking at Salamasi's instructions to make Hando, and I think, God, I really wish I knew how to cook. Okay, let's do this. It just says, mix all this stuff up in a bowl. I can do this. So I get everything out because that's how I cook. You cook when you don't know how to cook, you get everything out so you can stare at it. And I put everything in a bowl and I'm following the instructions very robotically. And the last thing you have to do is temper some sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds together. So I googled temperature. I then google temper cooking. For some reason, I decide to get a big frying pan out to temper these sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds. And so I put the pan on and I light the hob and let it do what it's doing. I get distracted putting the mixture out into. Into a baking tray. And I don't notice that I've been tempering a bit too long. And the pan is smoking. The smoke alarm starts to go off and I panic. I don't know what to do. Do I turn the hob off? What do I do? So I grab a tea towel and I'm between the smoke alarm, trying to wave the smoke away from the smoke alarm. And I'm. And the hob trying to wave the smoke away from the hob and the tea towel catches fire because I'm an idiot. And now I've got a tea towel on fire, the smoke alarm's going off. The pan is still smoking because I still haven't taken it off the hob. So I open the back door because that seems like a sensible thing to do. I open the back door, I throw the tea towel out onto the. Into the garden. I turn off the hob and, and I take the pan out, take the pan off the hob and I run outside and I leave it on the ground outside, making sure I don't stand on the smouldering tea towel, then find another tea towel and I try and wave the smoke away from the smoke alarm and I'm really just a year and a bit's grief just suddenly crashes over me. My mum is gone. She won't be able to show me how to cook this stuff. I can't follow simple recipes. And she's gone and her food is gone. And I'm not sure how I'm going to honor her in this new home. And so I sit down on the middle of the kitchen floor and I cry. The smoke alarm is still going on and I look up because there's a smell in the air. And somewhere amidst the smell of smoke and burnt sesame seeds and mustard seeds and cumin seeds, there is also the smell of onions and garlic and ginger and chilli. And my house smells like my mum's kitchen. And for a second, just for a second, it starts to feel like home. Thank you.

[Padma Lakshmi]

That was Nikesh Shukla. Nikesh is the author of three novels, as well as editor of a recent collection of essays about race and immigration called the Good Immigrant. Nikesha's story really brings home the point that food can bring us closer to the people we love, even when they can't actually be with us. That brings us to the end of our episode. Thanks so much for joining us. And if you can, don't forget to give your mom a call.

[Podcast Host/Announcer]

Emmy nominated Padma Lakshmi is internationally known as a writer, entrepreneur, and food expert. She's currently host and judge for America's Culinary cup and is the author of Padma's All American. Mary Mack's story was directed by Michelle Jalowski, Parvati Ananth Narayan's story was directed by Chloe Salmon. Nikesh Shukla's story was directed by Meg Bowles. Additional audio mixing by Davey Sumner. This episode of Lamoth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin, Janess, Sarah Jane Johnson and me, Mark Solinger. The rest of the Moth leadership team includes Gina Duncan, Christina Norman, Marina Clouche, Jennifer Hickson, Jordan Cardinale, Caledonia Cairns, Kate Tellers, Suzanne Rust, and Patricia Urenya. The Moth Podcast is presented by Odyssey. Special thanks to their Executive producer Leah Rhys Dennis all moth stories are true, as remembered by their storytellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org. You can't reason with the sun. Trust us, we've tried. This summer, it's time to put that angry ball of fire on mute. Columbia's Omnishade technology is engineered to protect you from the sun's harsh rays that can burn and damage your skin in. The sun is relentless, but so is our gear. Level up your [e-mail] to spend more time outside and less time slathering on aloe lotion. You're welcome, Columbia. Engineered for whatever.