Now back to the fried eggs. Ok, I have the egg here which is fortunately in one piece otherwise Kaddu will twist Mother Nature’s rules and make me lay eggs. The tiffin, oh sorry, Teflon coated non-stick pan is on the gas oven.
What should I do next? Break the egg perhaps.
“What are you doing by merely staring at that egg? Break it and put the yolk in the pan”, Kaddu howled.
See, I an not that bad in cooking, I was also wondering the same. But the million dollar question is how to execute the above thought process. A pragmatic analysis tells me that I should knock the egg against the kitchen slab- yes, that’s it. So ready, steady GO-thack-there goes the egg against the slab. Hey but I missed a part in my thought process- the yolk. It has landed and made itself comfortable on the kitchen slab.
“WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?” Kaddu resembles a hyena animagus when she screams at the top of her voice.
Now I ve surely didn’t commit a crime as trechearous as a murder-but yes-I actually murdered the egg.
“What have you done?I told you not to break the egg, see, yuck, you ve ruined the kitchen slab, I polished it clean just before you entered the kitchen.” Kaddu screamed, finally breaking into a diatribe.
“Ok, I …well, now will you tell me what to do next.”
“First clean this place, then get another egg- I’ll tell you how to put it n the pan. You are such a tomboyish, dung-headed , spoilsport. You cant even do such a simple task as this-what will you do after marriage,you will make your family starve……..” and the diatribe continued. This lady should join Miss Mamta Banerjee’s political party. Had she done that earlier, it wouldn’t ve taken Miss Banerjee such a long time to drive Mr Tata out of West Bengal.
“Clean the place with what?” I asked her.
“See there’s a rag near the tap.”
I found the rag alright. But I cant really make myself touch it. Its condition is thus, it could have been used to wrap a Mummy at some point of time.
“What are you waiting for?” This lady is surely going to drive me mad.
Ok ok, I am doing it. She is actually in a revenge taking mood for all the fun I had made of her before.
So finally I am ready with another egg. This time no more analysis. Its wise to consult the experienced- in this case, well supposed to be the uber-experienced.
“What shall I do now?”
“Break the egg shell by knocking it gently against the slab.”
“Ok”
“I said knock against the slab, not brush it as you are doing . if you continue doing this, the egg will break only when the chicks will come out of it.”
“Ok ok”.
Thash- I am telling you people, the yolks of this particular species of eggs have an affinity to rest on the slab, they don’t like it there on the pan, so what can I do about it. Kaddu wont stop blaming me for the debacle.
“GOOD FOR NOTHING, good for nothing, good for nothing, that’s what you are. Get out of here at this very instance. You are going to ruin my kitchen in a day.”
As if the kitchen is her property- constructed and maintained by Kaddu Pvt Ltd.
When she broke the first egg (ok in this case I will also include the second) didn’t she make the same mistake. Now if I ask her, she will lie.
“GO-I said.”
“Who is going where?” Hitler staged her re-entry on the scene of accident at a perfectly calculated moment. Had she come back a moment later, I would have escaped this torture. But no-she has to come back at this very moment and announce the extension of my torture routine.
“No one is going anywhere, Kadambari, give her some other work to do. She has to learn these things. Its not credible to be a stupid bloke who is not good for anything………….” Another diatribe continued for the next 15 minutes.
These ladies can actually try out their career in politics. Our country will go great guns. Each and every representative of the upcoming generations will look forward to becoming a great cook so that they can prevent themselves to be sent to concentration camps aka kitchen , as I am today.
Tuesday, October 28, 2008
Tuesday, October 21, 2008
6 Months
BANG!!!!!!!!!!! No-its not a fire cracker going off in a celebration party, this is actually the sound of one of the unfortunate tires on which my Chariot of Fire(that’s what my car deserved to be called) runs on. 17 years and still running-first this wonder of technology used to be handled by my father ,who, one fine morning,(fortunately for me and unfortunately for the car) gave in to my whims (well partially as I was urging him to buy me a kinetic bike with my pocket money savings of the last four years so that I can participate in a bike rally) and decided to hand over the car keys to me with a never ending list of conditions which begins like this:
I should take care of the car, i.e., regularly wash it ,take it for servicing etc.
I should never drive alone and always take any one of the noisy ladies(well this is according to me not my father and this group includes my mother-heading the list, 3 of my aunts(masi ji) and 2 of my cousin sisters who are so scared of sitting in the car when I am behind the wheel that their screeches can mke my ear drum resemble a rag.)
This list goes on with several other conditions like I should listen to whatever suggestions our mechano-cum-driver bhaiya gives me about driving (and during driving)-but if I start imposing this condition on myself I and the bhaiya both might end up in a hospital because this guy not only have a gift of gab but he can shut up all the chatterboxes in the world with his never ending AkhandKatha which are more or less about his achievements in the field of repairing punctured tires, blown off horns, his Schumacher like driving skills et al. Sometimes I wonder that someday I might have to hear it from him that he has helped the ISRO guys in assembling the Chandrayan.
Back to the present scenario, here I am in the middle of a high road, with a punctured tire AND a punctured stepny in the hood.
This is one of the many incidents which imply the lashing of bad luck that I have to bear for the last 4 months now.Bad luck?Is it fair to call it a bad luck-well, I am confused there as well. This phase began with that Dumbo Singh(good for nothing) walking out of my life. Surprisingly I didn’t feel bad because of the break up-I tried to make myself cry( as girls and protagonists do in soap operas) but I ended up laughing thinking about the blunders I ve committed while I was with him-one among those numerous blinders being I gifted him a pink teddy bear on his birthday, because I couldn’t think of anything else. I mean what can you gift a person who talks about chocolates, cooking, soft toys and dresses and apparels (discussions about these made up most of our conversations). Till date I couldn’t figure out how I happen to be with him as I hate chocolates and soft toys and I can do anything but cooking.
Cooking- well, as far as this skill goes – we say that some skills are inherent in us or a certain person is god-gifted in a certain thing-well, as far as cooking is concerned, the above saying goes the other way round in my case. Ever since I completed my graduation, my masiji is making a fervent effort to teach me the basics of this skill-but as I said, some things are really not made for me. My venture into cooking enterprise( which happen to comprise my masiji’s kitchen as the head-office with my masiji being the CEO and her cook-Kadambari Kalavati Pan being the sole senior executive cum senior business analyst and resource manager) began with my masi’s endeavor to teach me cooking , especially kindled by the incident which took place when some bullies (that is what I consider them) disguised as groom’s family came to our place to consider my sister’s prowess to be their son’s bride. It so happened that the lady in the party happened to be a chalti firti encyclopedia of cooking and she expects her to be daughter-in-law the same, started a jargon- “What should be added to bitter gourd curry along with cardamom , sugar and salt to get aesthetic taste that Raja of Muzaffarpur used to get in his bitter gourd curry?” WHAT???? ‘cardamom + sugar’ that too in bitter gourd curry, and how would my sister know what some bullshit raja used to have for his lunch or dinner or whatever-I mean , what does she want?A daughter-in-law or a chemo-food lab assistant or a food historian or someone who cooks weird things like cardamom + sugar along with bitter gourd. Obviously my sister, who till then could prepare only a handful of dishes(that too in such a manner that even the stray dogs might sometimes refuse them )failed in her interview, and lo!, our family(according to the senior ladies in the family) lost a prospective groom,who according to them is “laakhon mein ek –heera tha who”. Well, I really wanted to tell them-that their statement has a folly in it-first of all-he cant be “laakhon mein ek” because whatever manipulations my aunts would like to make to the demographic reports of the current Census, a boy cant be “laakhon mein ek”, but the same can be said about a girl if she happens to hail from Hazari village of Haryana because that is approximately the sex ratio of that village( well , for this result multiply the numerator and denominator by100).
Anyways, that one hell of a cooking bum had started the epidemic in my family ,among my aunts (particularly),and I happen to be the sole victim of this because I am the only member in my big fat Bengali family who is still unmarried and who doesn’t possess any of the skills that are supposed to be the pre-requisites to launch oneself in the ,marriage market. So there I am-the very next day I was woken up at 4 in the morning and when I protested to the atrocities being committed on me, Hitler re-incarnated has a prompt answer for me- “If you don’t start cooking now how can you serve food at 8-that is the time when the breakfast is being served. You are such a spoil sport that you don’t even notice at what time you are being served. GET UP “, ok ok, I am getting up .Its really difficult to drag yourself at such an hour of night or day-what shall I call it-ok leave that for now.
Finally I managed to freshen myself and enter the kitchen. I was ordered by Kaddu(that’s what I call her-though she is frantically mad on me for this-but this is what she deserves, though I don’t call her by this name infront of her-then I would be sent on a no food ,no TV ,no mobile and no computer concentration camp by Hitler) to fry the eggs-on a non-stick pan. Oh..k-non-stick “Nothing sticks on it-Nothing. It is tiffin coated.”
“Teflon”-I corrected.
“Yes yes, that”.
“If nothing ever sticks to Teflon, how do they get Teflon to stick to the pan?”, I asked her.
“Shut up-otherwise I’ll call didi”
“Ok ok”
“Now back to work- get the eggs-and don’t break them, if you break even one I’ll make you lay one.”
How can she possibly make me do that? Does she have any idea as to what the hell is she talking about-ok,we will not go into the details of mammalian anatomy that I am sure Kaddu doesn’t have the capability to pass through her neural processors. But anyhow, Kaddu’s name is actually a pun on her just like her surname “Pan” and the comment she has passed just proves it. She has a Kaddu for a brain and she even looks like that- ok enough criticizing others ,even I don’t have Einstein brains and Aishwariya looks –so I think I shouldn’t be criticizing Kaddu like that.
So back to kitchen work, rather back to obeying Kaddu’s orders.
To be continued.............................
P.S.: The above work is purely a work of fiction and any resemblance to the real life characters is purely non-coincidental :D and for the sole purpose of fun.
I should take care of the car, i.e., regularly wash it ,take it for servicing etc.
I should never drive alone and always take any one of the noisy ladies(well this is according to me not my father and this group includes my mother-heading the list, 3 of my aunts(masi ji) and 2 of my cousin sisters who are so scared of sitting in the car when I am behind the wheel that their screeches can mke my ear drum resemble a rag.)
This list goes on with several other conditions like I should listen to whatever suggestions our mechano-cum-driver bhaiya gives me about driving (and during driving)-but if I start imposing this condition on myself I and the bhaiya both might end up in a hospital because this guy not only have a gift of gab but he can shut up all the chatterboxes in the world with his never ending AkhandKatha which are more or less about his achievements in the field of repairing punctured tires, blown off horns, his Schumacher like driving skills et al. Sometimes I wonder that someday I might have to hear it from him that he has helped the ISRO guys in assembling the Chandrayan.
Back to the present scenario, here I am in the middle of a high road, with a punctured tire AND a punctured stepny in the hood.
This is one of the many incidents which imply the lashing of bad luck that I have to bear for the last 4 months now.Bad luck?Is it fair to call it a bad luck-well, I am confused there as well. This phase began with that Dumbo Singh(good for nothing) walking out of my life. Surprisingly I didn’t feel bad because of the break up-I tried to make myself cry( as girls and protagonists do in soap operas) but I ended up laughing thinking about the blunders I ve committed while I was with him-one among those numerous blinders being I gifted him a pink teddy bear on his birthday, because I couldn’t think of anything else. I mean what can you gift a person who talks about chocolates, cooking, soft toys and dresses and apparels (discussions about these made up most of our conversations). Till date I couldn’t figure out how I happen to be with him as I hate chocolates and soft toys and I can do anything but cooking.
Cooking- well, as far as this skill goes – we say that some skills are inherent in us or a certain person is god-gifted in a certain thing-well, as far as cooking is concerned, the above saying goes the other way round in my case. Ever since I completed my graduation, my masiji is making a fervent effort to teach me the basics of this skill-but as I said, some things are really not made for me. My venture into cooking enterprise( which happen to comprise my masiji’s kitchen as the head-office with my masiji being the CEO and her cook-Kadambari Kalavati Pan being the sole senior executive cum senior business analyst and resource manager) began with my masi’s endeavor to teach me cooking , especially kindled by the incident which took place when some bullies (that is what I consider them) disguised as groom’s family came to our place to consider my sister’s prowess to be their son’s bride. It so happened that the lady in the party happened to be a chalti firti encyclopedia of cooking and she expects her to be daughter-in-law the same, started a jargon- “What should be added to bitter gourd curry along with cardamom , sugar and salt to get aesthetic taste that Raja of Muzaffarpur used to get in his bitter gourd curry?” WHAT???? ‘cardamom + sugar’ that too in bitter gourd curry, and how would my sister know what some bullshit raja used to have for his lunch or dinner or whatever-I mean , what does she want?A daughter-in-law or a chemo-food lab assistant or a food historian or someone who cooks weird things like cardamom + sugar along with bitter gourd. Obviously my sister, who till then could prepare only a handful of dishes(that too in such a manner that even the stray dogs might sometimes refuse them )failed in her interview, and lo!, our family(according to the senior ladies in the family) lost a prospective groom,who according to them is “laakhon mein ek –heera tha who”. Well, I really wanted to tell them-that their statement has a folly in it-first of all-he cant be “laakhon mein ek” because whatever manipulations my aunts would like to make to the demographic reports of the current Census, a boy cant be “laakhon mein ek”, but the same can be said about a girl if she happens to hail from Hazari village of Haryana because that is approximately the sex ratio of that village( well , for this result multiply the numerator and denominator by100).
Anyways, that one hell of a cooking bum had started the epidemic in my family ,among my aunts (particularly),and I happen to be the sole victim of this because I am the only member in my big fat Bengali family who is still unmarried and who doesn’t possess any of the skills that are supposed to be the pre-requisites to launch oneself in the ,marriage market. So there I am-the very next day I was woken up at 4 in the morning and when I protested to the atrocities being committed on me, Hitler re-incarnated has a prompt answer for me- “If you don’t start cooking now how can you serve food at 8-that is the time when the breakfast is being served. You are such a spoil sport that you don’t even notice at what time you are being served. GET UP “, ok ok, I am getting up .Its really difficult to drag yourself at such an hour of night or day-what shall I call it-ok leave that for now.
Finally I managed to freshen myself and enter the kitchen. I was ordered by Kaddu(that’s what I call her-though she is frantically mad on me for this-but this is what she deserves, though I don’t call her by this name infront of her-then I would be sent on a no food ,no TV ,no mobile and no computer concentration camp by Hitler) to fry the eggs-on a non-stick pan. Oh..k-non-stick “Nothing sticks on it-Nothing. It is tiffin coated.”
“Teflon”-I corrected.
“Yes yes, that”.
“If nothing ever sticks to Teflon, how do they get Teflon to stick to the pan?”, I asked her.
“Shut up-otherwise I’ll call didi”
“Ok ok”
“Now back to work- get the eggs-and don’t break them, if you break even one I’ll make you lay one.”
How can she possibly make me do that? Does she have any idea as to what the hell is she talking about-ok,we will not go into the details of mammalian anatomy that I am sure Kaddu doesn’t have the capability to pass through her neural processors. But anyhow, Kaddu’s name is actually a pun on her just like her surname “Pan” and the comment she has passed just proves it. She has a Kaddu for a brain and she even looks like that- ok enough criticizing others ,even I don’t have Einstein brains and Aishwariya looks –so I think I shouldn’t be criticizing Kaddu like that.
So back to kitchen work, rather back to obeying Kaddu’s orders.
To be continued.............................
P.S.: The above work is purely a work of fiction and any resemblance to the real life characters is purely non-coincidental :D and for the sole purpose of fun.
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