Absorbing the essential details, I moved to the second paragraph. It was then; I heard a heavy crash of falling objects. I was sitting in the garden (or so I would like to call define our flower potted plants) and without the aid of radar or sonar, was able to pin point the epicentre of the din – our kitchen.
With trepidation, I ventured in to the war field. The kitchen floor was littered with vegetables, jars, utensils, plates and a gluey looking syrupy material.
The field commander was a sight to behold. Face covered with the same gluey syrup, seemed like a facial. To add colour to it, some bits of “sliced” vegetables were stuck in the glue.
Suppressing my laughter, I gingerly stepped inside our home. Ours was a small flat and the size of the kitchen was a fraction of the common area, which we failed to note earlier in the blue print. A Himalayan blunder.
The kitchen was as cramped as the command module of Mercury, Gemini and Apollo missions. To walk in and come out needed the navigating skills of those astronauts.
This did not deter my wife, from stocking the kitchen shelves and unutilized floor space with kitchen wares, gadgets and provisions rivalling a Mall.
In this constrained capsule, she moved around like a pirouetting ballerina. I never stopped wondering how my wife could do it time and again with an accuracy of a few millimetres to avoid collision.
I recall with shame the only time when I hurriedly entered the kitchen and came running out, at the sound of falling objects. It was like an asteroid shower, sans the light.
Grinding, mixing, washing and cutting vegetables, draining and sieving, frying and boiling goes on parallely.
In between the milliseconds, she would rinse a cup, dry a plate. If time permits, even make a cup of coffee or a phone call – this is multi-tasking of the highest order.
All these jugglery's must have emboldened her to cut a corner or two with her kitchen mates – provided it was nothing to do with electricity. She obeys the laws of electricity in Toto.
To her, the gadgets/machines are animate and affectionately named. Grinder is vortexer, mixie is tornado, washing machine is whirligig, ceiling fan is whirly blade and the air-conditioner is thermion .How and why ‘a mystery remains’.
I have even doubted if she actually converses with them in a special machine language?
Each kitchen mate had a weekly off and the planned menu involved no overtime for any. The only exception she applied was, on off duty day such a kitchen mate should serve in non-active capacities. Yup, she ruled the kitchen - military style.
She must have some scientific streak running in her genes; liked to challenge, particularly the laws of gravitation, in her domain.
Idly is traditionally made from a batter-mix of rice and urad dal. I am an anti-traditionalist. I take the actual batter and mix it with vegetables, noodle, vermicelli, flour or any other thing I could lay my hands on. I relish and to whoever happens to be nearby, serve it as a petite dish.
This trait of mine must have appealed to her or gave her a chance to get even with me. Secretly she had planned a new and unheard variety of sweet. She knows pretty well that I crave for sweets at around midnight when everybody is asleep.
She decided to try out a new sweet dish, may be to surprise me on my birth day. What she did not know was that our daughter had already spilled the beans to me.
Our daughter had guessed the intention and the intended guinea pig, from the unusual quantities of certain vegetables disliked by both of us.
I was unaware at that time that I would indirectly contribute to the mess in the kitchen. My wife chose the day on which the grinder enjoyed a weekly holiday and this laid the foundation for the unfolding story.
That day was the weekly off for the grinder and the mixer jar had no suitable lid .It was broken and the shop wallah told me to replace the jar itself. It was still under my active consideration.
She decided to go ahead anyway. She seated the mixer on the grinder top, at an angle, wedged it with a table spoon.
The grinder itself was not on terra firma but on top of bag of rice packed in a polythene sack. She found a one side closed cylindrical, shallow vessel to use as the lid for the jar – just for that one time.
Starting the mixer, she moved over to the gas range to turn the burner to “sim”, she was multitasking as usual; this time it was using the mixer and cooking vegetables, all in the mill-metric free space.
She then held the makeshift lid tightly for some time and turned over to the vegetables that were being fried. After checking the lid position on the jar, did some draining of boiled vegetables. Once again, conscious of the temporary lid on the jar, she spent a little time near the mixer.
Satisfied that the jar-lid combo was doing fine, she turned the burner to full and completed frying of vegetables. As she was about to switch off the burner, all hell broke loose and of course the sound effect brought me scurrying in to the house.
The surprise sweet recipe (diced chow chow, snake gourd, mint leaves, a sprinkling of flour and fried semolina) must have literally jumped the jar, dislodging the cover plate on the mixer. It must have looked a volcano spewing molten lava.
The series of vibrations, linear and lateral motions that caused the mess must have reminded her of a Tom & Jerry caper.
The grinder slid from the rice sack (holiday or no holiday) and took the mixer and the power cable along for company.
Together, gathering strength, they took a passing shot at the plastic tub holding washed kitchen utensils. Empty vessels make more noise, you know, and they just did that.
It is needless to say that the floor of the kitchen looked like a battle field. The casualty was the new never heard/never tasted variety sweet. The making of the surprise sweet turned out to be a surprise of a different kind.
I woke up with a start, when my wife nudged me with a cup of hot herbal tea. Realisation, then struck me – I had dozed off, after reading about the woman astronauts in space.
This must have launched my imagination, simultaneously, putting my wife in to a capsule like our kitchen, and narrating to myself those fictitious happenings.
When I recounted the dream, she had only this to say: “Finish your tea and then have your bath. You have started to dream in the mornings too”.
She hurried in to the house and I followed suit wondering whether my imagination will come true one day!
I am interested in knowing whether the new sweet variety was tried out? would like to know the significance of 12062013.. a code?
ReplyDeleteThe news item about the Chinese launch was published on that date. Hence the title
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