With a grandmother from Bannu in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, we cousins were all quite familiar with having the traditional comfort food painda (or sohbath) at home at least once or twice a month.

Whenever our mothers would be short on food ideas, they would resort to this simple but rich comfort food. The more adventurous among us kids would simply dig into their bowls of painda with bare hands, while the finicky ones would be offered a spoon to have it with.

So it came as a surprise to us all to find Mimi, our eldest cousin, who married into a family from Waziristan, complaining about the painda meals being offered in her new family. “No, they don’t eat like we do,” she cried. “The entire family sits on the floor around a big earthen platter with watery broth, in which they drop in pieces of roti, mixed in with their hands before eating from the same platter,” she continued.

“In between morsels, the broth also drips from their fingers and chins,” she complained. 

A........

© Dawn (Magazines)