In 1984 I was living in a large two-bedroom, two-bathroom apartment southeast of the UC Berkeley campus, sharing it with a fellow grad student named Carl. Carl had been at the table at the International House residence when, disgusted with the food in the cafeteria, I had thrown down my fork, announced I was looking for a apartment, and invited all and sundry to join me. Since I was determined to eat well, I did all the cooking, and Carl very amiably did the dishes.

But occasionally he would cook something for a potluck or other special occasion. Once he asked me if I could lend him one of my mother's recipes for Indian food. This dish was finished off with cumin seeds, black mustard seeds, and small dried red chilies fried briefly in hot oil. I'd made it many times for him, but he hadn't been watching me.

I was sitting on our balcony reading when I heard him coughing violently. I went in to see what the matter was, caught a slight whiff of acrid smoke, and held my breath. He hadn't known how hot to make the oil or how long to fry the spices, and he had burnt them. I narrowed my eyes to slits, went into the narrow kitchen and retrieved the small pot, carried it out onto the balcony, and opened the sliding doors and all the windows wide.

Carl was still coughing, and after a while he said he felt better but he was going to go lie down for a while. Two days later he was still not feeling all that well, and he visited the campus hospital, where they determined that his left lung had collapsed.

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