Like all young girls of middle
class urban Indians of the seventies I was not supposed to love cooking. My
mother being a compulsive cook toiled it out at the kitchen to dish out
delicacies – delicious and routinely non-monotonic. My grandmother was a
compulsive cook who entertained no short cuts. My mother enjoyed innovation but
allowed deviations to traditional dishes only under duress. However – when it
came to her daughters – she was absolutely strict. No need to step into the
kitchen other than to be her taster once in a while – was her verdict for us. And
with her fondness for a tight slap along with a tight hold on my delicate
ponytail I dared not.
But it is difficult to suppress
genes – and even more difficult to deter enterprising future cooks from
entering the kitchen. While me and my sisters cautiously kept out of the
kitchen when mom was around – we enjoyed spending sunny spring mornings
meticulously cleaning and sorting raw jackfruits or banana florets for her.
These processes being laborious – she accepted the help – albeit grudgingly.
Winter evenings were often spent close to the hearth, helping the maid roll out
fulkas. The bonus was a peek into a surreal world of marshy lands where people
hunted for clams, mussels, water spinach or marsilea to cook a meal, of the
value of a fifty paisa coin that could buy a few spoons of mustard oil and a
match box to light a fire and cook the clams, of hunting for edible mushrooms
that adorned Snow White’s garden in my book of fairy tales, of frogs croaking
in the impenetrable darkness that descends over a village soon after sunset with
dots of twinkling fireflies, of draughts that cracked up parched fields - a
world of poverty and have-nots far removed from my realities – Sarat Chandra
materializing for me in that smoky kitchen.
Time flew. It was my first summer
break – a long and arduous time away from friends. Mom was down with high
fever. It was time to put to test some of those theoretical knowledge acquired
through observation. After raking up our brains for something easy and tasty
for snacks, we zeroed in on Luchi and Begun Bhaja (Puri and fried brinjals). We
sisters were all experts in kneading and rolling. A wok full of oil was heated
up – and then came that momentous time – when the puris had to be slid into the
pot of boiling oil! The heat seemed unbearable as my soft hands neared the oil
– the last three quarters of a feet were insurmountable. The puri was left to
plop into the oil. The hot oil splashed up in a rage to smear my hand with loving
red hot blisters. Next evening, an old classmate from school days, a boy who
wanted to be more than a friend – stroked the blisters with tearful eyes – a
perfect excuse for my mom to banish from the kitchen till further notice.
But man proposes God disposes. As
we entered our third year – a mess worker’s strike at Kharagpur compelled us to
cook for survival. And the dormant genes sprung to life. Starting with the ubiquitous
potatoes we soon graduated to Bhindi, brinjals and Egg curry. As confidence
reached new heights – I ventured to cook at a senior friend’s house to
celebrate the engagement ceremony of another couple. A few post-graduates - with
me as the sole UG representative – it was a bunch of novice cooks with lack of
expertise of different orders. I was assigned to cook the quintessential Rohu
kalia and payesh – kheer for the uninitiated. Armed with full theoretical
knowledge – I even managed to fry the fish this time without any major
disaster. But the moment of truth still had to be faced – what seemed to be a
pool of curry good enough to be served with ladle when I had last seen it on
fire – had dried up mysteriously by the time it was served! Curry or no curry –
friends declared that they could spot a cook in the making. The dessert – thick
and creamy with an abundance of cashews – turned out to be a delightful
rice-cake not a rice-pudding – which had to be cut into pieces with a knife but
enjoyed thoroughly by all and sundry – friends emphasizing yet again on the
point of a budding cook – the bud a tad far from blooming yet – but then it was
only my 20th year on this earth. Obviously I was not perfect. And the only way
to attain perfection is to practice. So my culinary adventures continued. It
was another momentous realization – that this is one feminine trait that
feminists can enjoy stress free without the fear of antagonizing the men in
their lives. All things sharp or tangy, crispy or crunchy, spicy or hot - were
enjoyable to boys, friends and boy friends, men - retro or metro – so long as
they emerged from the pans and pots of feminists and not their tongues.
As my penchant for cooking grew –
so did my kitchen. Graduating from a kerosene stove to an air fryer is a long
saga spread over 27 years. Along with the paraphernalia grew the repertoire of
activities to choose from - sauteeing, broiling, glazing, braising, grilling or
roasting – further complicated with options galore to choose from the
repository of animals and birds, herbs and vegetables – native and foreign, organic
and inorganic, gluten-free and oil-free. Cooking is no longer a simple art. Cooking
today rather needs a storehouse of knowledge along with the ability and
inclination to understand a complex fusion of science, arts and technology.
But then life forced me to walk
the reverse direction in complexity. Yet another technology challenge was posed
to me when I wanted to make a simple caramel pudding at a new place – a new
set-up – bereft of all gadgets – barring a simple induction plate – not even a
gas stove. Induction plates are choosy about who they allow on top – one can only use designated vessels with
induction-friendly bottoms. None of what I had, seemed fit to cook a caramel
pudding – other than a small doubtful looking aluminum saucepan.
“Can one use aluminum vessels on
an induction plate?” – thankfully one can google anything these days. Well – it
didn’t say no – the answer was rather long winded – about eddy currents and
electro-magnetic waves – induction and not conduction. I have never managed to
read a full page of any Electrical Engineering document without having to take
three breaks. But time was short – and
my concentration was stupendous. The summary of that long document seemed to say
that impossible is nothing though it would be inefficient to try this
combination.
Who cared for efficiency? I was
not into any cooking Olympiad. All I wanted was a perfectly caramelized creamy pudding
– with caramelizing posing the severest challenge. I coated the aluminum pan
with sugar – switched on the plate and braced myself for some inefficiency. But
the plate refused to light up – it was obvious that the induction plate was in
no mood to turn itself on at the contact of a simple aluminum vessel that was
meant for the ordinary gas oven – and not designed specially for it. Well - the
last line of the document did say that “all-metal friendly induction plates are
yet to be manufactured” – but then the whole article on inefficiency was rather
redundant I thought. My old belief about documents related to electricity being
rather dubious returned.
But the pudding had to be – for I
am a compulsive cook. So a comparatively smaller induction friendly wok was fished
out and forced to serve as the caramelizing pot and then the pudding bowl –
immersed within a big wok of boiling water – old world style steaming in 21st
century.
The proof of the pudding is in
eating they say. Life comes a full circle when the certificate-of-proof is
issued by mom – so what if she has to knife it out from the wok! After all it
is the taste and the texture that matter – she declares and gives me a 100
percent! Dad asks for a second helping.
It is for moments like these that compulsive
cooks like me never learn a lesson – they continue to try impossible things
under impossible circumstances. Once in a while the cloak of impossible
vanishes like thin air. Buds break into flowers. Fingers touch the sky. The
blisters are healed by a magic touch. The journey continues.
[LIPIKA
DEY]
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