Learnt cooking under an able guide

Activity: Cooking

Date Performed: 22/10/2010

I now understand why people in different professions envy lecturers. It is because we (Lecturers) are blessed with number of holidays and that helps us to engage ourselves in multifarious and productive activities. At the end of the day, that indulgent person becomes versatile.

My parents & teachers have taught me to be loyal to the one who has helped me to develop into a nice human-being. That still doesn’t stop me from rebuking the school in which I studied in and thereby becoming disloyal. I am a non-science student & if you ask me how a laboratory looks or how it works, I will certainly fail to answer. Today when I look back I don’t feel bad either, for not studying science in a laboratory environment, but I feel disgusted to say that my high school never gave me/us that minimum exposure to laboratory and introduced me/us to the lab equipments, unlike other high schools. I have no grudge or hard feelings towards my teachers, but it was the management which greedily made us pay hefty fees, yet failed to cater what should they had to.

But after I worked with my mom for an hour in the kitchen all those feelings out of thin air vanished in no time. It was a real practical class and the lab, its equipments and the tutor were all absolutely fantastic. Kudos to my mom & my job, as both helped me in learning cooking! Hey I just forgot to thank B.S. Yeddy’s, BJP’s strategy to declare holiday today to all schools, colleges and nationalized banks and appease Valmiki creed’s people, thereby win a few votes in the next election! I always was in a notion that cooking is a very easy task that can be executed keeping the brains in the market, mall or on a serial. Now that it is dispelled, I understand how difficult it is. It is not a cakewalk and not as easy as boiling some water on the pan and pouring straight from the packet some noodles, as we do in the hostels or PGs or even at home and grab a quick bite, when we are in hurry.

It is neither monotonous nor boring. It triggers me now as to why God pressed female into cooking and men into hard strenuous jobs. Cooking involves one’s active brain; (That doesn’t mean hard strenuous jobs performed by man are dull and it requires no brain. In fact it requires equal amount of involvement and at times it needs more). Cooking requests the participation of a very good hand & eye, its perfect co-ordination too. Patience and Alertness are the key virtues to survive in the hot hot kitchen. A cook requires to be very careful of all minute details & he/she shouldn't forget that playing with the lethal weapons called fire and knives is risky. A small variation in the taste or some carelessness in the kitchen, it backfires! Either it spoils the mood, day, work etc of the person who consumed the prepared food or one injures oneself for being reckless.

The activity was more satisfactory as I spoke to my mom continually for that one hour in pure unadulterated Kannada. Mostly our spoken language is a mixture of different languages and in the process chastity of the language is unfortunately lost!

Like a schizophrenic I washed my hand so many times, while cooking and it reminded me the MS notes (MS in Psychology from Kuvempu University, Shimoga), which I had prepared toiling day in and day out before examinations. I’m waiting for the results keeping my fingers crossed and the thought that passed by my mind during cooking, actually made me more anxious about my results.