OF MISADVENTURES AND LANDING INTO CURRY!!

The kitchen has always been my ma’s forte. It’s where she would caste a spell and turn raw vegetables into lip-smacking dishes. As an appreciative daughter my moral duty was to lap up every drop, every morsel of what she would make. For me a simple logic worked - if food tasted so magical then it would take magic to make it too and to juggle with the third degree hand trick was not my cup of tea for sure.

I remember the first time I had donned on the brave task of cooking was when I was about 6. Only being possessed can explain the devilry that followed. So here was I all ready to cook supper for my afternoon game. First I had to decide what I would make and who would get to have it.
Decision 1: anyone gets to have it APART FROM ME. Once that decision was made deciding the rest was easy ;)
Decision 2: Ingredients. What could be more easily available and tempting as bits of … paper!! Soon the table had a heap of neatly torn bits of dusty assorted cellulose. Just a few days before that I had overheard ma telling a friend ‘you know, you can make a good dish with just about anything’ Now you cant blame me if she didn’t qualify it as ‘anything edible’ right? Anyways I added sufficient amount of water to turn it into a squishy mass. But it looked gruelish and insipid. So I decided to add the greens. Getting if from the fridge would create too much noise and spoil the surprise. So I promptly went into the garden tore some random leaves and preempted myself by remembering to get a pinch of soil (read pepper) for a final sprinkle. From then on there was no turning back. Literally anything and everything that I set my hands on went right in, from exotic twigs to tooth paste!!! A sneak into the kitchen helped me add butter and inundate my batter with ketchup (the only two things my mom kept on a shelf within my reach). Suppressing the free expression of my culinary skills by keeping the spices and herbs literally out of my reach was sooo not done 

Anyways, undaunted I went on for the final step of my recipe. Now this one needed some negotiations with our oriya cook (thakur). He was paranoid of lizards and I swore if he did not set my delicacy on the fire I would just pluck one wriggly thing from the wall and aim it straight at him! (Thank god he never dared me an execution of my repulsive plan…I am super reptilophobic myself :o)
So he put that bowl of my concoction on the fire and bought it to a sizzling boil all the while mumbling what a wretch I was under his breath and I ……………. AGREE.

Now for the best part. Mission: find target. That came easy with the victim walking right up to me! The cleaning maid had just come in when she found me pouring over this steaming bowl and asked me what it was. “taste and see for yourself” I said promptly. The unsuspecting maid gulped down the whole thing, yes the whole damn thing!!! Now this took me by unforseen shock. As she took spoon after spoon I could feel my pulse race. The trail of ingredients started flashing cross my mind one by one each threatening me with a greater potential to kill!! Hitherto sense of achievement volatilized and what overtook me was a sense of deep, all consuming blood curdling, GUILT!! No one would believe that it was an accident. They would charge me of murder most foul, they would put my behind bars, they would whip me every single day till I would become numb, they would hang me upside down and then … and then….. and then ….. they would feed me that thing ! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO…… I got up sweat dripping down my forehead, my extremities cold, my ears red hot. (wonder which law of thermodynamics could explain the temperature distribution curve of my body at that point) I suppose fear and guilt had sedated me to a semiconscious state. The moment I collected my senses I asked my mom, “Maa, mashi achhe na gyachhe?” translated literally would mean “Mom, is aunt still there or gone?” Do I need to say that all the puns were very intended there?

Learning that she was still alive and kicking gave me a feeling which today I can only equate with seeing my experimental rats coming out of anesthesia after an implantation surgery of the brain. However till date it’s a mystery to me, how she managed to digest not anything else but the cellulose that made up the paper? Cellulase, any biochemistry book will tell you, is an enzyme exclusively present in the bovine digestive system!

Years later, during my undergraduate days, I happened to be alone at home for a fortnight. The initial days were obviously spent on Maggi - the universal staple diet of all Indian hostels and talentless singles. Soon I reached a point where my body got so allergic to maggi that it nearly threatened to produce anti-maggi antibodies if I would gulp in one thread more! Optionless, I landed up in the kitchen again. I have seen my Ma fry and sauté vegetables in oil, but where suddenly all the curry appeared from was an eternal mystery. So this is how curry revealed thyself to me. I had the humble intention of just frying two pieces of fish for dinner when my venture was interrupted by Ma’s call. When I went back to the kitchen I saw a column of thick smoke issuing from the Tadka! It was almost as if the souls of those little fishes were rising up in ether and I could just tell what remained in the pan were charred carcasses of their once delicious bodies. With feline agilty (puns intended), I grabbed the jug and doused the smoke with a generous splash of water. A noisy uproar came down to a gurgly simmer and finally to a thick sizzle. Eureka! And I discovered Curry!

Its been quite a few years hence. Today I love to cook. I can manage regular dishes all fine. But being the chronic adventurist that I am, what really lures me to the kitchen till date are the Pineapple chickens, the Camembert Hazelnut potatoes and Honey herb bananas.

Happy burping!!