The Sweet Melodies of Cooking
-Moheindu Amiran Chemjong
Yesterday morning, I cooked a
full three-course meal. Now, is that something? No? Would I know how to cook at
all? I can do the finest sushi, heart-warming minestrone soup and extremely
luscious curry laksha. Would cooking be a favorite past time? No, not
necessarily. Hence, when I decide to drown in the throes of cooking after three
odd months, it’s absolutely drama supreme amongst my loved ones!
In terms of cooking, from the
time I learnt how to make a decent cup of tea to getting familiar with the
vegetables and spices that I did not recognize till a few years ago and making
that paradigm shift in my mindset towards cooking, I can honestly say that I’ve
covered a great deal of ground.
While growing up at home, I was
totally convinced that I am not carved out for cooking or cleaning. As long as
I remained indulged in the ravishment of intellect, I thought I am on track.
When I eventually left home to live by myself while studying, the reality hit
me hard in the face. I had to either live my life on take-away food, order home
delivery each day or survive on frozen pre-cooked food or instant noodles for
the next two years.
For the first six months, I
really did that. It was after a while that I started missing home-cooking as I
lovingly remembered those flavors of the past. I remembered those days back at
home where my display of indignation had been too apparent when I had been
offered cooking lessons, including structured courses by my parents and
relatives. Since I had absolutely no
idea about cooking, I had no option but to start with the most basic method of
cooking-boiling! I started having boiled eggs, boiled chicken, boiled tomatoes,
boiled potatoes, boiled peas, you can imagine-the boiled works! But thanks to
the raw herbs, Tobasco, ketch-up and the spice of lemon, I acquired and grew to
like boiled meals. I feel like a cave-girl but still love a plainly done palate
till date.
Then the next step was to get a
fancy wok, a brownish slow-cooker, a fabulous steamer and multi-colored,
tasteful crockery to keep my spirits up (till then, cooking was a no-no
activity for me) and a handful of cookery books from around the globe. In came
the emails, letters and paper cuttings of recipes from friends. I was so
thankful that I had the fastest connection broadband at home such that if I
needed quick instructions on the dos or don’ts of a particular spice, for
instance, I could embrace google for quality control or sometimes, even for disaster
management. It was here that I decided to train my psyche, play with the
stereotype in my head and I decided to ardently court cooking as a ceremonial
splendor!
Yes, I burnt my fingers, I have
scars to last a lifetime as testimony to the cuts on my hands while trying to
learn how to chop vegetables and got the fire alarm ringing and neighbors
alarmed many times before realizing that, cooking, like writing, is another art
form of colour, of vibrancy, of hope and of radiance. I tried, tested, failed,
wasted a titanic amount of food while learning how to get these gastronomical
arrays correct. For the next one year, the trials and errors dominated my
cooking chambers as I religiously submerged myself in this new found prolific
creative activity. But there were upsides to this phase, too.
Though once a person who had
admitted that the cooking element was missing in me, I learnt to differentiate
the cooking techniques that I had not identified with. I learnt the beauty of
grocery shopping, especially choosing the textures, colours and layers of food
which after my cooking epiphany would translate to exotic aromas and exquisite
flavors as my delightful culinary sensations. In these tender strokes of art,
my heart started to appreciate the vast interesting universe of spices and
condiments, the varieties of the sexy olive oil, the freshness of even boring
vegetables like leek, broccoli, asparagus or artichokes, the heavenliness of
coconut and soya milk, even the gooey uncooked chicken or lamb and octopuses
and lobsters. I hadn’t been near uncooked raw meat for as long as I remembered
as felt very queasy. The experience made me reaffirm my belief that this art,
too required discipline and that discipline is really a horse that we ride! The
magnificence also lay in the fact that there was imagination,
conceptualization, personalization and of course, harmonization.
Cooking, all of a sudden, broke
like a fragment of impassioned serenades in my being. Can you believe that my
friends and cousins started to appreciate my culinary finesse? My curries and
soups became such hits that they nicknamed me ‘Queen of Soups.’ I flourished in
the starring role and the whole idea of cooking provoked only feelings of
goodness in my heart, exceedingly. When they murmured those words of praise, my
grandiose sense of accomplishment almost forced me to trumpet the feelings in
utter poetry!
Yesterday, I had consecrated my
three hours of cooking for my aging relatives. They were just overpowered by my
generosity of my morning time presented to them. Maybe the nuns taught me this
invaluable lesson correctly long ago, it is in giving that we do receive. The
allure of giving myself in cooking for others is overwhelming in itself. Their
thank-yous crystallize as immortal realizations in my heart. But when they look
me straight in the eyes after my having made the labor of love in a pot, we
exchange mutual glances of awe, our hearts bloated with love. This inexorable
moment only lasts for a minute but the eloquence of the art of cooking and the
delirium of dazzlement in selfless giving in cooking and my feelings are best
articulated by a favorite composer Irving Berlin, ‘ The song is ended but the
melody lingers on.’ The sweet melodies of cooking…..
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