My mom left for the U.S. last November. She went along with my sister to help her take care of my beautiful, just born niece. Since then, I have been cooking for myself (and a couple of visiting friends occasionally) as I work from home mostly. I have had some experience in cooking when I was left marooned in Mauritius for two months at a time for a couple of times.
I was working there on a mobile application enabling punters to bet on horses through interactive SMS platform. Career wise, a great experience. A beautiful country surrounded with sugar cane fields and scenic beaches with various terrain. But what could a 25 year old, shy, poor, Indian guy do there alone? Adventurous people would immediately pounce upon such an opportunity. But you see, I am not particularly adventurous. I'd rather spend my evenings with YouTube and playing strategic battle games on my laptop.
I also had some time to learn cooking. Well, as I took a lot of pre-mix packages from India, cooking for the good part was steaming rice in an electric cooker. And cooking eggs. I became an expert in fried eggs. I could flip the pan gently and catch the egg on its sunny side without splashing the yolk all over. Slowly I graduated to making Sambar and Rasam on weekends. They tasted funny in the beginning. But I was not complaining. My tongue and nose longed for the taste and smell of Sambar masala and crackling fennel seeds in ghee. It brought back lot of memories and made me lonelier.
Even though I ate a lot of instant noodles, I tried something different with them. Like frying the cooked noodles with eggs in a wok (Egg noodles), adding some more seasonings (Red chili powder, etc) and I actually liked the experience.
Then one fine day, I looked around the kitchen and was shocked. There were no vessels to cook. No wok, no spoons, no other vessel. I was confused as to where the hell did all the vessels go? I took a long look around and kitchen and found them all lying in the double sink, all piled up. I couldn't believe the size of the stack. There must have been a hundred individual vessels of various kinds piled up in there. It was like a nightmare. All the vessels were soaking there for around a week. The stove top was filthy with splattered oil stains, spilled sambar stains and little cracked mustard and fennel seeds. I was amazed that I didn't notice this mess before. What did I do?
I ordered Pizza. I ate pizza for a couple of days and could not afford it anymore. I had to face what I have been avoiding for sometime now. Do the 'effing' dishes!! I couldn't really bring myself around to get it done. Then hunger took over. I had to spend close to two whole hours on a Saturday to get all the vessels clean. Then labor for another hour to get the kitchen counter and stove top clean. I was totally exhausted and my back was aching like my spine is just going to crumble apart. Then I was in no mood to cook. I skipped breakfast and lunch and cooked myself a pack of instant noodles for dinner.
The next morning when I looked at the clean kitchen and the lone vessel in sink which I used to cook noodles last night, I somehow thought of my single mother. She has been cooking for our family of 5 people and has been working in a Government office and she somehow managed to keep the kitchen meticulously clean. I've seen her laboring away in the kitchen whenever she's home. My sister and I have never attempted to help her ever in anyway. When we were students, we would watch TV all evening and complain to our mom that we were hungry. When I got a job and started working, I would come home about 10 PM and expect food on the table right away. Believe me. It would be right there. Now, thinking about all that, I really had a revelation kind of thing. I respected and loved my mom more. My back was still hurting.
I came back home from Mauritius and have never had to cook for another five years. Now, though I have improved my cooking skills, can cook an amazing sambar, pongal, onion chutney, channa masala, amazingly thin dosas, tomato rice and do more than fries with eggs, I still can't keep the kitchen clean. I had to hire help to get the kitchen clean.
We've heard stories about how men dominate the world of restaurant cheffery! Cheffery! is that even a word? I don't know. Well, mostly, men are chefs in restaurants all over the world. But you get my point right? Why don't men cook at their home?
Because we have to clean up behind ourselves. We are too lazy to do that. And we don't see any filth until it has grown to two inches thick. That is the real reason why we don't really cook at home. Please mind, this is in spite of being better cooks and as a species enjoy cooking more. Haha! Just kidding. And that's why we enjoy making cocktails more. It's a not very messy and we enjoy the results ourselves. All we need is enough alcohol and a wet bar.
Cheers!!
