(Image source from: The New York Times)

As a child growing up in Chandigarh, a north Indian state, the chef Cheetie Kumar knew that Diwali, the Hindu festival of lights, was approaching by the aromas exuding from the kitchen.

She remembers catching the smell of whole milk simmered with freshly cracked cardamom and carrots in the air as she ran outside to play.

"I cannot tell you what I was playing or whom I was playing with," Kumar said. "But those smells are with me to this day."

Kumar, along with her husband, Paul Siler, opened the restaurant named 'Garland' in downtown Raleigh in 2013. She makes Indian and pan-Asian food with a vibrant North Carolina slant. As a self-taught cook, she gets ahead by uniting global flavors and erasing the geographic boundaries of ingredients and techniques.

Her food is nuanced and edgy, and so is she: Kumar moonlights as the lead guitarist for a rock band, Birds of Avalon. "It's a creative outlet as well as a source of creativity," she said.

Her way to professional kitchens was not a linear one. In the early 1980s, when she was 8, she and her family moved to New York and lived on Gun Hill Road in the Bronx. There, her relationship with cooking developed more from duty than delight. Her parents - each holding a Ph.D. in biochemistry - worked full-time in immunology research. In spite of the burdensome schedule, Kumar's mother prepared Punjab-style homemade meals virtually every weeknight.

"We went out for dinner maybe four times a year," Kumar said. Her mother's dinners always had at least one vegetable, like the fragrant cauliflower-and-potato dish aloo gobi, and some kind of dal finished with tomato Tarka alongside basmati rice, chapati, yogurt, and mango pickle.

"Helping my mom make dinner was the chore I loved to hate," Kumar said.

ImageSource: The New York Times

Over time she grew the love of preparing family meals, but it was a tattered cookbook collection from the 1960s that lead her toward cooking professionally.

"I bought that giant, dusty cookbook for a nickel at a Bronx library book sale," she said. When she realized she could make some of the dishes, like Madhur Jaffrey's mango chicken, inspiration struck: "I devoured those recipes. I was both intimidated and challenged. I wanted more."

The menu at Garland links the dishes she makes from childhood memory with ingredients that speak of the South. Her shrimp and okra borrow a spice mix from her mother, made with cumin, coriander, mango powder, black salt, and turmeric. Paired with flash-fried large shrimp from eastern North Carolina, the dish straddles her past and present.

ImageSource: The New York Times

"As a family, we always did things differently," Kumar said. "I was taught at an early age that everything is up for interpretation, even how we celebrate Diwali."

The holiday, which is celebrated on November 7 in the United States this year and marks the victory of light over darkness, is both a sacred ritual observed at home and an animated communal celebration with neighbors and friends. There is plenty of food, particularly sweets.

Gajak, a sesame seed-and-peanut brittle, and gajar halwa, the pudding infused with carrot and cardamom that she recalled from her childhood, are Kumar's favorites.

For a recent dinner at the James Beard House in New York, Kumar served a riff on gajar halwa with yogurt custard and carrot sherbet.

-Sowmya Sangam