If you are Malayali, and probably if you are from almost anywhere in India, you know this question. It comes before "How are you?" It comes before "How is work?" Sometimes it comes before "Hello."
"Have you eaten?"
A question that is really about love
For people working far from home, in Dubai, Doha, London or Paris, that question arrives on a late-night video call. It sounds small. It isn't. It means: I can't see you, I can't cook for you, but I am still taking care of you.
When I started writing my novel, I realised that question was the heart of the whole story. My working title was even Have You Eaten, Sam? before the book became The Journey Between Two Continents.
The distance we carry
Leaving home brings opportunities, but it also brings things we rarely say out loud: the missed calls, the birthdays we watch on a screen, the guilt of building a life while parents grow older far away.
Sam, the hero of my book, carries all of this. His story moves between a village in Kerala and the Grotto of Lourdes, and through it runs that one question, asked again and again by a mother who never stops worrying.
For the families on both sides
This book is for anyone who has answered that question from thousands of kilometres away, and for the parents still asking it.
So, before you go: have you eaten? 🙂