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“Dah makan?”. A question that connects us. A question of care and love. A question that might as well be a greeting. When I think of home or growing up, this question always comes to mind. The weight it holds, the care that is expressed through such a simple question—it is so much more than its translation, asking if I’ve eaten. It’s an extension of care, sometimes an offering and, most times, an invitation. What this phrase really means to me is an expression of love. It is what I think of when I think of love languages. 

With increasing attention in popular culture, love languages are a theory of how we, as individuals, seek to give and receive love. The five love languages devised by author Gary Chapman are as follows: physical touch, gift-giving, words of affirmation, acts of service, and quality time. While these are generally thought of in a romantic context, as well as being a more western conception, the idea of love languages is universal and transcends romantic love to spill over into how we care for others. 

It’s easy to boil down preferences based on what we feel, but when we think of it in a wider context, the way we want to receive love is largely dependent on the way in which we experienced love and care growing up. Growing up in an Asian household, it’s not unlikely that physical affection wasn’t the main outlet of love. Though a massive stereotype, there is a degree of truth to this. We see the love of Asian parents delivered through cut fruit, preparing meals together, or connecting with our extended family over dinners, to the point where food in our culture is almost used as a device to connect us all—an unspoken expression of love.

In the cold months at university away from home, more than anything, I’ve found myself craving a warm bowl of soto from home. After being abroad for so long, I’ve found that I’ve taken a home-cooked meal for granted. It is the love that goes into my mum making me a warm bowl of soto, the warm soup radiating in my stomach reminiscent of a hug, like the soup itself would be more than nutritious but comforting to the soul because that bowl of soup was a token of care. It’s clear that I miss more than just soto, more than the cutlery I grew up with, more than the soup bowls I grew up eating out of. The sentiment behind a home-cooked meal saying “I love you” is what I miss, and that in itself is a love language, telling me, without words, that I am cared for. 

Linguistically, ‘love’ and ‘care’ are almost synonymous. In his debut novel, On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous, Vietnamese-American author Ocean Vuong highlights the similarities and overlaps between love and care with respect to Southeast Asian culture. The word ‘love’ itself is borrowed from English. ‘Sayang’ itself resembles love but holds a different context of love altogether. What this reflects is that as a region, we don’t necessarily rely on words and language to convey love, so that leaves words of affirmation out as a cultural love language. Therefore, we, as Malaysians, or even Southeast Asians, are by nature more inclined to acts of service when talking about love languages. By doing things, using the example of making food for another, or sharing a meal, we show the other person we care, which is synonymous with love. It’s an unsaid extension of care. 

So, how does food, specifically food at home, relate to love? To put it simply, food is a major element that brings us together. When I think of Kuala Lumpur, my hometown, I think of my family and food. I think of my favourite foods and family recipes my nenek wrote down in a blue book for when my mother went away for university in the 90s, how the recipes for her favourite dishes have been preserved and passed down. The entire concept and magnitude of food at home, the culture that food itself holds, is something I shamefully only realised after moving overseas for university. I also miss the mass gatherings, kenduris, and open houses with an array of dishes bringing us together. When we think of holidays such as Raya, Chinese New Year, or Deepavali, we think of the kuih muih at different relatives’ houses, the rendang, the pineapple tarts, and the muruku, because food is so deeply ingrained in how we connect and celebrate our cultures in Malaysia. We get together, we celebrate, and we eat food, and we know that we are loved by each other through the simple act of sharing food. 

On a slightly different note, food is healing; it helps us remember and brings us comfort. In her memoir, Crying in H Mart, Michelle Zauner grieves her mother by remembering the dishes she, as a Korean immigrant, used to make for her. In her novel, readers are taken through the world of Korean cooking, used as a tool to connect Zauner to not only her mother’s culture, but to her mother. In the opening paragraph of her memoir, Zauner grieves for her mother, saying you will “likely find her crying by the banchan refrigerators, remembering the taste of my mom’s soy-sauce eggs.” She highlights the feeling of remembering our loved ones through food, the idea that, despite following a recipe step by step, the love that goes into a meal by someone you love can never be replicated. Similarly, one’s presence is announced through the food one makes, their style of cooking, and their specialities. Food brings us together, it lights us up and the love in that dish radiates from within us, once digested. 

To relate back to the notion of food being a love language, again, Zauner uses her mother to exemplify the care that goes into someone cooking for another as she explains how food is how her mother expressed love. As mentioned throughout this piece, we take care of people by feeding them, or we feel cared for by being fed by other people, by being asked, “Dah makan?”. Further, she explains how she “could always feel her affection radiating from the lunches she packed and the meals she prepared for me just the way I like them.” 

When I was home over the summer break after my first year of living and studying abroad, my family at home knew how much I wanted nasi lemak with teh ais on the side. They knew how much I missed my thosai ghee, and from which mamak I wanted it. It’s the little details; the way my mother knows what I like and how I like it, and what to leave out, and it’s how the warmth of a home-cooked meal, not only nourishes my appetite but my heart and soul. 

So the next time I’m home, or the next time anyone asks me if I’ve eaten, or “Dah makan?”; I’ll know in my heart that I am cared for.