There is an ‘ordinary’ moment before we really get to meet/know someone. Anyone. We look at them and sometimes see them, sometimes don’t even see them. It is a precious moment, actually; a moment that precedes all judgement. Everything else — every moment thereafter — is tainted — with our thoughts, with their thought — and helps us decide whether we indeed end up liking them or disliking them.

The man at the Indian shop in my neighbourhood has been, for months, just that: A man. I went in, I bought my stuff, I went out. He, in turn, smiled faintly in remembrance, took my purchased items, keyed them into his cash-tally machine, pronounced the total, took my debit card, scanned it, put the items in a bag and sent me on my way with a second faint smile of thanks. That was the sum and substance of our knowing each other.

Then a letter arrived in the post — my post, that is. No, it wasn’t from the Indian shop man (who, remember, I still didn’t know — from Adam, as they say). This letter was from a friend planning a visit; a friend with a leaning towards the gourmet and, thankfully, just stopping short of a leaning towards the gourmand. This friend, in the letter, expressed a desire to renew our acquaintance over a plate of homemade biriyani. Seeing that I was the one going to be at home, the obvious conclusion would be that I would be the one cooking the said dish. (The reader at this stage perhaps gets a glimmer of where the Indian shop man makes his entry more properly into my universe and stops being an ‘ordinary’ person.)

So ... I set off in search of a packet of biriyani masala (mix of spices) and what better place to find a fine array of this than at the Indian shop. Only, once there, confusion struck. “I want a good biriyani masala,” I told him (which, come to think of it, is the longest sentence I’d uttered in his presence.) “What kind of biriyani are you planning on making?” he asked back, in flawless English.

“Erm,” I remember saying and perhaps, “Erm,” again, if only to signify that I wasn’t terribly sure.

“Mutton, beef, chicken, egg, fish or dal?” he asked, trying to be helpful.

“Dal? Biriyani?”

“Oh, yes, even soya these days for vegans, and it’s very tasty believe me,” he said.

I was there for nearly two hours in the end — not all that time spent on choosing an appropriate masala, which took no more than ten minutes after I’d settled on chicken. The rest of the time was spent — in a way that time has of flying by when one is absorbed — listening to this once-perceived ‘ordinary’, quiet man expound the history and the virtues of one dish, beginning with the derivation and the spelling of the word itself — biriyani, or biryani, from the Persian, although there was a bit of confusion over which Persian word it had actually been derived from: The word for rice, which is ‘birinj’; or, the word ‘beriyan’ used to mean roast.

Somewhere in between tracing the various routes, the dish is thought to have taken to come to India: Was it the Mughals? Was it the Awadhs? Was it the south Indian Muslim traders of yore? Somewhere in between this discourse on the Mughals and how they themselves fell under the umbrella of Genghis Khan as did Timur — who formed his own dynasty that was influenced by Persian culture — I learned that his name was Mahadevan: “Maha, meaning great; and deva, as you know, relating to God. And next time you’re here I’ll tell you how I got to be given this name. Yours, of course is Martin.”

For a moment I thought this man was also psychic, then he, seeing my face blanch, laughed: “I’ve seen it on your credit card and I remembered,” he added.

— Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.