Rendezvous with Kitchen..!!

My Mom's word's still echo in my ear, " Dei Harishaaa, come here, and atleast see how to make this Sambhar, I don't know what the hell are you going to do there(in Ulm)?" and as usual I'll go, "Mom! chillax, I will manage". I used to feel silly sometimes at those continuous recursion of words from Mom, and they always used to end with a warning, "No one will be there to cook something for you when you return from University, so better listen to me!" and evidently, I have never regretted those words more than now (Well, Mom also used to tell that, you will regret it there!). You are in a country, where there is only one Indian shop for selling Indian food and only one Indian restaurant, which sucks big time and the worst, you are not earning, so money management needs to be absolutely precise than those of the Chartered Accountants. Damn, these stats should have hit my head in India. Nevertheless the rendezvous had to be done someday.

The first day I arrive here and check out my room, the Kitchen appears as some alien land, with some hot plates. Oh boy, here we go. However, the first month somehow I managed, as mentioned before, with Bhuvan the saviour, who's an amazing cook. Nevertheless, the guilt finally took the better of me and I told Bhuvan, I can take from here mate. Hell I was ready. only if I could have foreseen, that huge disasters awaited me. I can't even think of those days of experimentation, which my stomach was put under, it would not surprise to see the stone get dissolved as some edible stuff making me burp! Everytime I would be talking to my stomach, consoling it, making it ready for the food. Suddenly for a brief moment the lunch at the Uni, who provided only-salt-spiced-German-'special' lunch tasted like elixir. The fact that I had no job till the first 4 months made it even difficult, as my brusque brain would calculate faster than a Casio 991MS for the spendings and we would provide the Indian shop with all the profits, who still enjoys his monopoly here.


Finally, in the month of June, the job came calling, for once something went right, and the first thing I do, get some great spices, though cooking lay in genesis. Incourse of time, I was getting better at combining the spices and my first decent-tasting-dish turned out to be noodles (not maggi!). For the next 2 weeks, noodles would be the main part of my menu with all sorts of combinations, with vegetables, egg, tuna (another disaster!), etc. However, there was a new problem now, with the exams creeping upon, the cooking would squander 2 hours atleast, if the work load at the Uni was not enough. Everytime I would enter the kitchen, Mom's words would automatically playback, as if someone forgot to change the record (I almost ended up playing music the next time!). Towards the end of July, finally I make something good to taste (ok, this is relative to me!), Pulao, what was even better that it would take a maximum of an hour and a half to finish it, and this time decreased subsequently. Now I can't say that I am good at it, but I can make something edible (very positive from my perspective!). Mom's words still echo, but feels good, makes me feel at home.