Whenever I need to set my alarm for 4:15, I assemble everything I need to take with me the night before in a small corner of my bedroom so as to allow myself to wake up at the last possible minute and transition from bed to taxi in one sweeping gesture. The morning of August 28, 2014 was no exception. Alarm went off, lethargic thumbs managed to book an Uber, and I was out the door with a 22" x 14" x 9" or 56 x 35 x 23 cm carry-on, laptop bag or similar personal item, banana, pre-poured juice, and holy trinity of keys/phone/wallet.

With one exception.

Mid-pirouette at the foot of my bed, I had a sleep-induced epiphany that seemed profound at the time but, in retrospect, sounds more like the what-if-the-blue-I-see-is-different-than-the-blue-you-see type of conversation I had freshman year of college. “How cool is it,” I thought to myself as I flung up the bedspread with the tips of my finger and felt the weight of my body transitioning downwards to pick up the banana, “that with Uber and Delta on my phone, I don’t even need a wallet to fly all the way to Texas?” And like an octogenarian whose discovered digital technology for the first time, I let out a “ha!” as my body came through a demi detourné and I flipped my wallet into my laptop bag or similar personal item and entrechatted out the door.

It was halfway through my ride to the airport when I realized that I would, in fact, need a photo ID. So, I pulled my drivers’ license out of the bag, slipped it into my pocket, watched it fall out of my pocket, and smiled to myself in a still-asleep-type-of-acknowledgement that the rational thing to do would be to get it later.

Which I did, 5 days and two long airport security checks later, when my Uber driver, Muhammad came back to pick me up on my return from Austin, smiling at the arrivals gate at 1am with my drivers’ license in hand.

We got to talking, and he told me about how he was recently laid off when the Indian restaurant he cooked at shutdown. He was impressed with my slightly-deeper-than-superficial knowledge of Indian cuisine (I think I mentioned the word asafoetida at one point) and was happy that I pushed back against using Indian as a blanket term, asking about his regional preferences (turns out he actually grew up in Sylhet, a city in NE Bangladesh). There was a pause in his speech as he pulled off I-93 in Somerville, and then he turned and asked if I was hungry. I was, but I couldn’t think of a restaurant that would be open at 1:30am on a Wednesday morning. “Do you want to come over to my apartment for some curry?” he asked.

I did, so I did. It turned out that we didn’t live so far from one another. We quietly walked up the backstairs so as to not wake his four kids who were gearing up for their 2nd day of school, and entered into the kitchen. Within minutes the paratha were on the pan, the rice was in the microwave, and he was ladling out chicken, fish and egg curries that he and his wife had prepared earlier in the day. He kept apologizing that he didn’t have more rice already steamed. The chicken was succulent, the paratha buttery. The egg curry was unlike anything I had ever tasted, with a piquant flavor of stewed peppers and tomatoes that quickly eradicated the Delta Biscoff cookie breath I landed at Logan with. But the fish — the fish that he hesitated to serve me due to the generous spice his wife had lent to it — was my favorite. It was a lightly cooked whitefish bathed in a mustard sauce that was simultaneously comforting and exotic. The paratha kept flying off the pan, I was slurping down water after water, and I managed to not rub my eyes after eating, a perennial mistake I make with South Asian cuisine.

I left, satiated, the hour approaching three. I opted to sit in the front seat, a gesture that seemed symbolic but obvious. Even with the pending financial exchange, it felt more like a friend doing a friend a favor and me compensating him for ingredients and gas. We arrived at my house, he told me to pay him whatever I wanted, I gave him $40, he waited to make sure I got inside, and then drove away into the early morning.

I woke up the next day around 10, still full, my right hand smelling of tumeric and cumin. I wanted to keep up a relationship with Muhammad — he was eager to meet again and teach me some recipes. Upon recounting the story to my roommate Conner, he and I started scheming about hiring Muhammad to come and teach a number of us how to cook his favorite recipes. Synapses connected — it could be part of a program where each month we choose a different cuisine and try and get Cambridge to cook together in their homes, learning about the places they are cooking, we could put together spice and herb starter packs — we talked about Conflict Kitchen about EatWith about Restaurant Day about Kinfolk about Dinner Lab about Groupmuse and about Lunckpack, a group that I started last year during my Master’s program.

And then we took a step back. “Let’s just invite Muhammad over and take it from there,” we decided. And so we did. And later this month he and I will devise a recipe list and a dozen or so people will cram into my kitchen to learn a few of his favorite recipes, hopefully leaving with a full stomach, mind and heart.