Culinary Chores

My culinary expertise, I believe, has been transmitted to me through my genes, for my Mom is a great cook and so was my Grand-mom! Now that’s nothing new, for everybody feels that they have behind them an interminably long ancestry of cooking proficiency…specially boys who never really stop comparing their moms’ kitchen skilfulness to their wives’ cookery callousness, and no matter, how well their wives cook, they cannot really extricate themselves from this Oedipal Gustatory Complex! But, the wives never question their husbands’ sloppiness in cooking, and continue to bear the burden of inferiority all through their lives, although with ear-splitting protests. The question, they should ask their husbands at the very outset is that, instead of being so sadly nostalgic about their mom’s culinary potentials, why didn’t they, anticipating such cooking catastrophe, had not already learnt from their mom’s the trade secret? For, culinary expertise is also very well transmitted through genes, and it surely does not have gender bias! So, the mother can very well continue to live on in the son, and the poor wife may be spared of her kitchen duties, and relax!

However, I have no such problems, for I am happily single, till date! Yet, I have of late, began to exercise my cooking skills, much to the surprise of my mom, who is rather disconcerted that her monopoly over the kitchen is being considerably usurped. Every time I decide to cook something, my mother goes out of her way to help me with the paraphernalia of chopping and cutting vegetables, pasting spices and arranging the utensils, everything! Therefore, the credit of cooking a dish does not wholly goes to me! A strange battle is fought on the kitchen table, a battle which my Mom does not realise she is actually fighting. I have never pointed that out to her, and I shall never…for, I completely understand that the only space which she can claim to be her own (like countless other women of her country) is perhaps the kitchen. That does not mean that the other spaces are not available to her; but she is most surely the master of this particular space of the house. Hence her involvement. Of course, she does have other concerns that I might cut myself or burn my fingers…but nonetheless, I can feel her anxiety!

But I am an awfully lazy person! I would have barely braved the kitchen so frequently, had not there been a tech-revolution. My new enthusiasm in cooking solely rests on the Microwave which has invaded and colonized our kitchen a few months back. Although, I boast of carrying forward excellent cookery genes to make my entire maternal ancestry proud (for my paternal grandmother is anything but a cook), it is the Microwave and its several heat-adjusting buttons which really create the magic. A Sanjeev Kapoor recipe book remains open on my table from the very beginning to the end, and I follow each step rather punctiliously. And, what emerges out of the oven is generally edible. This, in fact, has become my favourite pastime of late, for the Microwave never-endingly fascinates me with its computerized culinary adroitness. Yet, at the end of every cooking expedition, I do feel a little morose, although the taste may be quite appealing to the gustatory sensations. The cause is something else: it’s like feeling objectified by the very object I have tried to create. Sounds complex? This is because the Microwave seems to smile back at me almost mockingly after I have finished cooking a dish: What have you done? The credit is mine! You know, it is this Microwave, which practically taught me what Marx meant by ‘alienation’ some one and half centuries ago.