Cooking Whispers....

“How am I going to cook”, I asked him. My head was exploding with that migraine I get once in a month, as regularly as my chums. “Just put the pain out from your mind”, he said. I almost strangled him.

The thought of cooking always takes me to that edge where I want to throttle the people around me. I like to eat out. I like someone cook delicious food for me. Why strain yourself when you get the same food with much more taste outside? Why waste so much time and effort to make something when all you have to do is go down and buy it? To make our Indian food, to make it exactly like the way his mother makes… it takes a lot of my time. More than that time is spent on deciding what to cook. Two hours of deciding, two hours of shopping, two hours of cooking.. only to be polished off in 10 minutes… and then again an hour of cleaning. I hate peeling, I hate chopping, I hate stirring, I hate grinding, I hate cleaning the mess I make from all these, I hate doing the dishes, I hate cleaning the stove… all I like is the eating part. I have heard many who proclaim that they love to cook. I can’t imagine how they love it! What is there to love? You feel hot, your kitchen will become a mess, and by the time you finish making food and clear the mess you had created, you won’t feel like eating it at all. It is a real pain. When I was young, I used to think how romantic and wonderful it would feel to eat a wholesome home cooked meal prepared with love, and that watching my husband happily chowing down and thanking me in everyway was worth all the work.... but now I know that is just a foolish dream of a silly girl. Whoever had said that the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach was the biggest liar ever lived.

I am not at all a bad cook. I can cook really well. I can cook delicious varieties. Still, I go for easy recipes. And I cook more than enough so that I will have plenty of left overs for the next night too. I have too many secret shortcuts that will help me to spend as little time in the kitchen as possible. If the outcome is tasty, the process doesn’t make a difference. Visiting friends is something I like… not because I can meet them and talk, but because I can close my kitchen that day. Inviting friends is another luxury. Then I have to make only one dish. The rest, arrives from the restaurant…. There are times when I really do feel guilty to my husband. But then the thought of entering the kitchen shoves away all the guilt. I have a kitchen in my house just because it comes with the house.

Cooking, once in a while, is ok. But not every day. I am fine with eating the same dish for a couple of days if it helps me not to enter the kitchen. But these men… they love home made food, but the women like to eat out. I can see the readers in two sides now, one waiting to punch me, and the other, nodding their head, smiling……

Meandering Whispers....

I woke up in the morning, no.. was woken up on that beautiful lazy Friday morning, by a nudge on my ribs from my darling husband, asking for tea. “Why don’t you make it today, for a change? Let me see how your tea tastes”, I grumbled, with two-tonned eyes. Whining about his fate to make a cup of tea, he went… and I rolled back to my slumber. I had always found that lying down with closed eyes after you wake up in the morning is more recharging. It is very difficult to come out from the warm bed… from the warmth of the blanket. It is at that time that memories come and chitchat with me. They swoosh, they swirl, they curl, they drool and make me spin in their web. And some cling.

I am thinking about my dad now. Yesterday was his death anniversary. It has been 23 long years. No, I am not being sentimental. I am past that stage. There was a time when I used to dream of treading untrodden paths holding his hands. But then one day I woke up to realise that those hands will never be there for me. And I survived without him. Wouldn’t say life was easy. To go somewhere, to decide some things… I had been denied many things in life because he was not there. If dad was alive, you could have… but now, NO… was the sentence that was often repeated.

I was a shy child. Sort of standoffish, aloof... I preferred listening to talking. It had always taken me time and energy to find my place in a group. I never talked. While my intellectual brain ripened, my outdoor life got crushed. I wanted to change. I wanted to be accepted in a crowd. I wanted to catch up what I had missed. And I tried to start talking with great difficulty. I tried to gain some energy from outside. But then I realised that talking will gain you more enemies than your silence. Was I trying to impress people with my words? The more I talked, the less control I had over myself. I started to reveal too much of myself. I was slowly becoming a prisoner of my secrets. My silence was a comfort to many. Somewhere along the way I felt that people were getting uncomfortable with my words.

When I overcame my shyness, I became more assertive. I am straightforward. And people found me bold. I have a mentor... a wise, patient, wonderful person who tells me that I am simply beautiful (which I know sounds creepy, still I believe him). He points out my best side which makes me very much proud of myself. The tint of depression which was peeking out in my life has completely disappeared. My world has its own taste, its own fragrance, its own light. The happiness I enjoy now is a song in itself. And I am not going to stop feeling this till my road ends.. or till there is nowhere else to go…………………….