scarletpearlsstuff

[scarletpearlsstuff]

I leave, but then…

I’m a leaver, I leave everything midway. Tea, driving classes, crash courses, jobs, story books, movies, relationships, and to-do lists. But over the past year I’ve realised, there is one thing I complete. I go from A to Z.

My mother and grandmothers from both the sides had their own fable of cooking. Right from bati chocchori a femine taught dish to Thakur dalan er ranna, I got to taste devouring Bengali dishes all my life.

Cooking has attracted my attention since childhood, before I realised I was foodie. I sat by these ladies, kept looking at their hands doing the magic. There were no spoons to measure, no recipe book they would look into, and of course YouTube was an aline. It was just intuitions, love and kindness to serve a patriarchal family.

By the rule book the men always ate first, followed by the children. Women? You know. I got my sheer taste of spending my days in join families. So it was the cousins, irrespective of gender who sat together for the meals. The only thing that made gender biasness in that cousins’ table was- the boys were served the larger pice of mach, an extra Chingri mach, two extra paneers and a bit more care.

All the fun that I’ve had in the kitchen faded with that extra for the boys. I wanted to have some more food. Only to realise in my teens, it was not the food, it was biasness that made me sad and jealous.

I vouched I’ll not enter the kitchen, will serve big pieces to the girls, and will fight for my chingri Mach. This worried the men and women of the house without a pinch of gender-role to meddle.

Made my way to college, got away from home and just when I thought I’ll be free, adulting started knocking. Apart from many a things I had to do during my mess days, cooking was the far more irritating and important thing. Numerous failed attempts of making a perfect roti to fry the fish perfectly, I realised cooking was rather a life skill and an art.

With all the love and loathsome cooking I did, hiring a cook later and Swiggy-Zomato later that I’ve managed to fill my tummy.

But deep down, I missed the taste of childhood. Ma’s cooking and seeing the whole gala of the kitchen. I decided, I’m gonna cook myself now onwards. With day in and day out, I discovered a fact about myself. The leaver is not a leaver when it comes to cooking.

Right from the deciding the menu, chopping the veggies, washing the mach mangsho and more, measuring the masalas, calling ma for guidance and indulging in YouTube cook channels, and dishing the food, I completed tasks.

This whole hullabaloo of the kitchen is therapeutic for me (exceptions be considered).

Am I a good cook?

Yet to reach there.

Will I keep cooking?

No.

Do I enjoy it?

Thoroughly.

With a lot being said and shared, I’m ending this blog with a quote,

“Cooking is like painting or writing a song. Just as there are only so many notes or colors, there are only so many flavors—it’s how you combine them that sets you apart.”
– Wolfgang Puck