One fine Thursday morning, I was talking to my younger brother over phone and that fellow started talking about how he wants to switch his career because he has too much time on his hands in his current job. I felt so old – I just cannot relate to millennials. After getting off the phone, I started thinking about my career (because it was only 11 am and who would expect me to be in office anyway), and then about my life. How I had never pursued my dreams. Not even dreams, my resolutions. When my ex-husband married a yoga person, I vowed that I will learn yoga. That evening I walked past a yoga studio and have avoided going down the path ever since.
That day, I went to office with things weighing on my mind. At office, there was a posting for a potluck event. Enough is enough, I thought: I need to socialize. I too, will learn to cook and bag a man. Between yoga body and food, in the long run, food will always be had three times a day. On the pretext that I had had a heavy breakfast, I went for a walk. I pinged Sugandha to see if she would join me. I laid my soul before her and asked her if she knew someone who could teach me to cook.
On being put in touch with Mr. Ramsay, I knew I was in safe hands. He told me that I will make kitchen my new home within a week. To come up with the menu, he asked me about my future man’s likes and dislikes. I told him that I liked desserts and de facto, he would too. He created a 3-item simple menu that balanced my Indian and American tastes, main course and desserts, and balanced the ease of cooking for me with my need to impress. It was brilliant. On the increase-of-difficulty scale, the menu and my syllabus read:
- Appetizer, mashed potatoes (first day)
- Special rice, peas pilaf (second day)
- Dessert, moong dal halwa (third, fourth day)
Day 1: Mashed potatoes
We met in evening the first day to get started on the mashed potatoes. I am not sure about other potatoes, but these ones were particularly hard to deal with. First, to boil them, after repeatedly tossing them in microwave, they still felt like stones. When finally, a knife went through, they did not want to come out of their peel. To be fair, the peel did not make it any easier too. Thinking back, I think Mr. Ramsay wanted to teach me really well and he had glued the peel to the potatoes - because when I did take some of it off, it stuck to my fingers. I rubbed the finger on my apron and then it was on apron. The peel was everywhere but the bowl of waste where Mr. Ramsay had stacked up the one long curl he had removed from his potato - all of it in one go. I had been duped.
After vehement protests, he ensured me again that there was not a simpler recipe unless I wanted to serve an uncut and un-peeled apple. I did finally manage to peel it all, and what was left of the potatoes Mr. Ramsay said could be painted green and used in the peas pilaf tomorrow. He said that it was not only my challenge, but also his hardest challenge to teach me, and therefore we both were together in face of this calamity.
By the end of it all, my one-man army was able to reduce the potatoes to a rubble. Mr. Ramsay said that he was looking forward to the challenges ahead, and we should get a good night’s rest before marching forward.
Day 2: Peas Pilaf
The next day, already buoyed by the feeling of the first day’s success, I thought that one day probably I can open my own restaurant, and be the Chef de Cuisine. Or if it was too ambitious, I can at least be the Su Chef at a restaurant. May be I can teach cooking - I could be so rich. With all the food shows, cook books, blogs, bakeries, food is quite the rage these days. By the time I reached Mr. Ramsay’s place, I was already pitying him for sharing his skill with me - little did he know that he was fueling his own fall. The knife he now handed out to me might just end up hurting his back.
Even so, I was a bit nervous when he handed me the knife. I recalled how my teachers and mother used to teach me to stay away from sharp objects. But here was this nut-head of a teacher who was handling out knives to me like I was an expert at cooking or something. I held the knife for 10 minutes in awe of it feeling like I ought to probably act as a painter trying to understand his paintbrush and someday maybe a BBC documentary would be made where Mr. Ramsay would recall this scene: “When I handed him the knife for the very first time …” I was interrupted by Mr. Ramsay, “You can begin chopping the onions whenever you feel you have warmed the knife enough.”
“Yes, certainly”, I was disappointed that Mr. Ramsay did not share my artistic disposition.
As I started working with onions, I could not remember why I had complained about potatoes the previous day. First of all, onion is a very unkempt vegetable. With all the disheveled hair and torn clothes, they do not make a good first impression. Then they are quite stubborn and will make such a ruckus when you want to peel them. They reduce you to tears each time, and you would think why you want to eat them all.
After peeling, they suddenly turn most funny and you cannot work because you are laughing with pain in stomach and stretched cheeks. These onions did not want to stay on the cutting board at all. They kept rolling off the board. I wonder why the cutting board does not come with seat belts to keep them secure.
As soon as I kept a knife on the shiny part of onion’s round, the onion backlashed - it skipped over the cutting board, flew straight past Mr. Ramsay’s face, and I would have followed it with my gaze flying into the oblivion, but I suddenly realized that the knife was traveling like a missile towards my finger after missing the onion. I escaped. I secretly was afraid that Mr. Ramsay might be trying to kill me by asking me to cut the slippery onions, but then a thinking fellow does not air such views in front of a prospective murderer: “Mr. murderer, I know you are here to murder me. Perhaps you would like to reconsider it?” “Yeeeehaw!” blood everywhere
To ease things up, I smiled sheepishly (it works sometimes), that might have convinced him to move my kill to another day for he said that maybe we do not need onions in the pilaf, we can do without it. He could read my mind very well. Thereon, we were one team again: we both knew what to expect from me, and that made things so much easier. Life lesson: It just takes some friction between two stones in the beginning to make the edges smoother.
Have you heard the saying – ‘work like a labor during the day, and a king’s sleep is bestowed on you at night’? I was prepared for my regal slumber and jumped into the bed. But soon I started wondering if Mr. Ramsay was indeed trying to kill me. At first, I was frightened and eked out plans to move out of this neighborhood that very night – to leave the enemy stumped. Bored of that, I returned to more practical issues that needed to be handled – my millions of dollars, and the good-food king title. I will not lie – for a fleeting moment I doubted my cooking skills. I was a bit skeptical of starting on the dessert that Mr. Ramsay thought would take me two days to master. This was back when he thought I could peel onions. Would I fail this test? Would I be one of those artists who are not appreciated in their lifetime? I spent my whole night tossing on pillow.
Day 3 and 4: Moong dal halwa
I went through my office hours all the time at the edge of my seat. My office life in general is not worth talking about. I had an uncle whose office is super fun though. He always has so many anecdotes to tell about his office. One time he told me that there was a co-worker who would borrow someone’s pen and never return it.
This co-worker, let’s call him Mr. X, used to employ the innocent “Can I borrow your pen?” as his bait. The soon-to-be-mugged-party would innocently reply “Sure, here”. And that’s it. It would be the last time they would be seeing their pen. Months went by and people complained to each other.
My uncle soon realized this trickery and came up with a plan. He engineered a perfectly fine fountain pen to malfunction. It would ooze out ink without any forewarning. How he accomplished this was not told for he did not want me to be handing out leaky pens to him. He kept this fountain pen along with another perfectly fine pen in his shirt pocket and waited for the fish (Mr. X) with the bait. He was betrayed the first day – the fish had gone for a pilgrimage. The pen, lacking any smidge of loyalty, mudded the pockets of its creator. Going without score on day one, betrayed by one’s own pen, and berated by wife for the huge blue blob on his shirt, would deter only less strong-minded people than my uncle.
The next day when the fish was going to be in office, he was ready with a new plan. Forget the fish, he was going to show the red handkerchief to the bull and wait for it to charge. Per plan, he ‘forgot’ his reading glasses at home and walked out. As he was about to sit in his car, he saw his wife come running from house, holding the spectacles and calling after him. He fled from the scene.
At office, my uncle’s manager asked him to fill out an application, and that was when he was going to wave the proverbial red ‘chief. He walked over the ten cubicles – his head raised high. He handed out the form to the bull and asked him to fill it for him since he did not have glasses. The bull, reached into the depths of his drawer, put his arm in till only his shoulder was visible, and fished out a pen and filled the form. He handed back the form, and said, “Maybe you can take this pen and save your shirt?” Uncle looked down and realized that a blue bob on his shirt was staring at everyone he met that day.
I told my uncle that fights that are fought well are almost as good as the ones that are won.
He said only losers say something like that.
I headed to my cooking class. I was ready to go into my arena to face whatever may come. Unlike the previous dishes that tested the brawn, muscular strength, the final dish required a delicate, artist-y, touch. I pride myself when it comes to ascetic sense - I am a connoisseur of art and food. I am not one of those carrying eucalyptus oil, but what I call a more pragmatic enthusiast. I can tell bad food from good, mostly.
As soon as I entered, I asked Mr. Ramsay if we should start working on moong daal halwa. He said that we can name it later depending on the outcome. Mr. Ramsay had kept the moong dal to be soaked overnight so that by the time I started working with it, it was a bit soft. We needed to grind the grains. Thankfully in this age of technology, there is not much that can go wrong in that. With just an occasional splash in the kitchen - when I forgot to put on the lid on the food processor, and then in the heat of the moment I opened the lid without switching the processor off to see if we had a paste - I managed to grind in just my seventh attempt. Mr. Ramsay said that it was a definite improvement, that culinary skills were indeed sprouting up inside me, and that we will move to an open space tomorrow when we prepare this again.
“You should also probably consider moving your kitchen in the lawn outside - away from plants and any life in general. That would probably be your gift to your to-be boyfriend.”
I could sense a tone of sarcasm, but that is often the case with wise people - you can never know whether it was a genuine suggestion or sarcasm. I would have taken it with a pinch of salt - only if I could measure it. Notwithstanding salt measurements, I said I will consider the suggestion.
The near-death experiences, muddying and cleaning, were all part of my and Mr. Ramsay’s life by the fourth day. I failed to surprise him anymore. In fact, he looked a bit bored the final day when I burnt the halwa and in a desperate attempt to save the ruins, I lifted the aluminum pot with my bare hands. He looked on with the look of the father who knows he cannot save his son from every single fall when he teaches him to ride the bike.
The neurons in my body must have reacted at quite an amazing speed for I dropped the pot faster than I picked it, splattering the contents. Then he looked on as a mother who wants her child to eat on her own, but is definitely tired of cleaning the bowls full of food he keeps dropping. I thought he looked a bit disappointed that I did not come up with a new method of destruction. When I offered to clean the mess, Mr. Ramsay said, he will take me up for my offer at the end of the day. I do believe that teachers should show confidence in their students, and I was a bit disappointed in Mr. Ramsay in this aspect.
The day of Potluck:
I woke up early in the morning on the day. I was surprisingly calm – serene even – I had a plan. Everything till now had been executed with Neo’s perfection, albeit with minor bumps. The hero is allowed to feel miserable here and then, but he does come out on the top of universe in the end. Nothing could dampen my spirit today, and all my mistakes will be made up for by evening.
I embarked on setting my kitchen in the garden and prepared the meal - it was almost the dinner time till I was done. I packed my moong daal halwa in a bowl and finally sunk down in a garden chair. A squirrel came up to the table, sniffed it, and walked off. It went back into the tree and said something and all the squirrels had a good laugh. I yelled, “one of friends roasts squirrels and eats them. I am not kidding.” I tell you, it is not easy being a vegetarian in America.
After taking a shower, I went to the potluck venue and placed the bowl on common table. I took a chair in direct view from the halwa and kept staring at it. The idea was that as soon as a guy helps himself with a serving, I will jump up and start a conversation. The wait was long, but the rest is history.
He came, he saw, he moved on. He came back again and eyed it suspiciously. He went around the table and tilted his neck to see it. I went over and said it was delicious. He reached out for a toothpick and poked it. He said, whoever cooked this has a good sense of humor to place it here. I thought it was a good compliment and we talked.
PS: All in good humor, I wish my ex a very happy new beginning. Cheers.