Pulao, an aromatic rice and meat dish, has a seminal presence in all traditional Muslim households. No feast, funeral or prayer meeting is complete without it. In Rampur, the timing of serving the pulao is crucial. The partakers are supposed to wait for it at the table while it is put on dum—simmering in a dough-sealed pot or cooker. The literal translation of dum is life. The pulao becomes lifeless when the dum steam escapes. It would be inconceivable for most people to associate the lavish pulao with mourning and remembrances. Pulaos take me back to Thursday fatihas (prayers) in my ancestral home in Aligarh. While growing up, we associated Thursdays with pulao lunch. My siblings, cousins and I could almost smell pulao as our rickshaw wheeled us slowly back from school. Lunch would invariably be served late, for several kilos of pulao had to be prepared in a large degh (large cooking vessel with a narrow mouth) over wood fire in the old kitchen, with Zarina Bua, our cook, muttering over the quality of meat or rice, ready to blame the lack of perfection on our old retainer, Khalil Khan. The pulao was distributed after remembrance prayers to the poor to invoke blessings for our ancestors. In the sixties, my grandparents with their brood of nine children had migrated from Rampur to Aligarh, where my grandfather had taken up an assignment as the university engineer at Aligarh Muslim University. Their taste buds were still Rampuri, and they created an ecosystem of foodways from Rampur—khansamas, rice, wheat, masalas and seasonal fruits.  My grandmother had banished all the Sufi practices from her house after the death of her mother-in-law—she came from a family that had a puritan Islamic belief system—but fortunately retained the reading of the Thursday fatiha over steaming dishes of pulao as remembrance- prayers for her husband and ancestors. It was one of the traditions she carried from her Rampur life. We—aunts, uncles, parents, cousins and siblings—would surround the dining table with our palms raised heavenwards, heads covered respectfully, stomachs rumbling as Nani Amma recited the Quranic verses and prayed for everlasting peace in Jannat for the dead buzurgs. We recited the prayers under our breath, at least I did; most kids just stared at the food. My grandmother believed that the spirits of the dead, particularly her husband’s, came down on Thursdays, and so prayers of remembrance had to be recited over a sample of steaming pulao dish before we began to eat. It always confused us as children—were the spirits hungry or did they just come down to eat pulao? We were not allowed to question our elders once we had passed a certain age. The prayed over and the now holy pulao was taken away and mixed into the degh (to make it all holy) and we finally got to eat, though not before a large portion was taken out for the maulvi of the neighbouring mosque and the poor living beyond our area of reference. Over the years, as Nani Amma became ill and passed the supervision of the kitchen to the daughters-in-law, the quantity of pulao reduced, the degh was replaced by a large pan, which could be used for cooking on the gas stove instead of the open wood fire in the courtyard. The fatiha prayer was still said over the pulao dish and a nashteydaan was sent to the maulvi of the neighbouring mosque. Nani Amma is no more with us; we still have pulaos on Thursdays, but there are no prayers for ancestors. Fatiha now belongs to a class of religious traditions which are declared ‘bida’ or innovations to be studiously avoided by those following the pure, unalloyed religion. My childhood association with pulao and prayers, the memory of pulao smells overlaid with incense scent, is reinforced by the serving of the dish at funerals. At a Rampur funeral, the timing of serving the pulao is even more critical. The funeral bier is borne out of the house on the shoulders of grim-faced mourners, leaving behind a gaggle of crying, wailing and sniffing women. When the men return from the close-by burial ground—there is a sense of calm resignation that borders on satisfaction if the dead person was old and ailing—and grief has subsided to a contained level, a cart bearing deghs of pulao trundles through the brick-laid lane, and pulao deghs are carried into the courtyard. Suddenly, there is a change in the tone of the day as morose-looking women get busy serving the piping hot feast to comfort the mourners. The perfect timing never ceases to amaze me; even in mourning it is crucial that the pulao should be served before all its steaming life, dum, escapes. Even in devastating grief one cannot serve cold pulao. Recently, the Rampuris have started spicing up the pulao with yellow chilli flakes and whole green chillies to suit the local palate. The old-timers (and I) still prefer the delicate redolence of the dish with a tiny amount of yellow chilli chutney and the occasional dahi phulki (fritters in curd).