Kitchen Confessions

How a subsistence-level-cook looks at the world of those who cook for enjoyment and routine with awe, fascination, and maybe a little regret.

It was the rarest of rare occasions. I was standing in the kitchen. There was an intimidating stand of potatoes and onions in front of me. A threateningly empty kitchen counter. And pyramid-like mound of boxes of masalas. I took a deep breath, steadied my shoulders, and thought, “Okay, let’s cook.” 

The dramatic-writer part of me would like to believe that what happened next was that my declaration was met with thunder and lightning like portends of doom in ancient Greek stories. But the humid Mumbai summer air was prosaically still. I poured myself a glass of coconut water and took a sip. I would need reinforcement. 

It was time. 

Some people enjoy cooking. I am not one of those people. I can cook, but only subsistence-level. This means that if I am left alone during an apocalypse with a well-stocked kitchen, I won’t starve. I won’t enjoy what I eat. But it’s the apocalypse, I better adjust my expectations. 

It’s a lack of skill I am not proud of, and one I have tried to remedy. The closest I have come to an apocalypse-like environment was when I was living through the German winter. I was cooking everyday — partly because I had to, and partly because I could’ve exchanged my limbs for the comfort of jeere waali dal. I cooked my way through different kinds of dal, chawal, and sabzi. Even experimenting with the occasional aloo parantha. The quality of my cooking might have even improved to a smidgeon above subsistence-level, but the truth then, and the truth now is, I just don’t enjoy it. Friends and family would tell you I make an excellent cup of chai. But the same friends and family send me surprised emojis when I send rare photos of my cooking. It’s a fact about myself that I have come to grudgingly accept. The kitchen stresses me out.

Which is why, I am endlessly fascinated, and in awe of, people who do cook. People who find pleasure in the kitchen. People who think of the kitchen as space to unwind. And people who have been cooking for so long, and with such routine, that for them it’s less a skill and more a part of life. Consider this a love letter to such folks — with just the tiniest bit of envy mixed in. 

It’s a letter I’ve written quite often in my head — for people I know, and for strangers alike. One such stranger is someone whose name I don’t know. Priyam Upreti is a 23-year-old corporate banker in Delhi who makes a series of daily vlogs on Instagram. His mother, though, is who I watch his reels for. Every day, she wakes up her son with a glass of amla water. Then, she’s seen in the kitchen packing truly innovative dabbas. Think beetroot roti, lotus stem sabzi, and season-dependent drinks like lassi. Then, you see her in the evening — again cooking a delicious dinner made of entirely new ingredients. It’s a reel series that makes me severely homesick because it reminds me of the comfort of home, and my mother’s excellent, excellent cooking. (Again, happy to exchange some of my limbs for the comfort of my mother’s aloo parathas.) 

It’s a level of cooking that I am unironically riveted by. Even though as I type this I can hear a ting on how cooking is gendered labour that hundreds of thousands of women do daily. The thing is, if you’re a woman in India, it’s damn near impossible to extricate cooking — the love for or the reluctance to — from traditional gender roles. Admittedly, I am in a position to romanticise it because of my caste and class privilege. But — while being clear eyed about how the kitchen can be an oppressive space for many — I think it’s possible to appreciate the mastery it takes to perform the labour of cooking day in and day out. Not just possible, but maybe also important.

Because what’s also undeniable is that so much feminist solidarity exists in the kitchen. In the generations of women who have laboured for years to create a daily orchestra of flavours, nutrition, and taste. In the family recipes which are often a gateway to oral feminist histories. And of course, in the stories my friends tell me, of the sheer pleasure of cooking a meal for one. 

Almost all my friends love to cook. I am the fool they feed. Upon interrogating exactly what is it about cooking that they love, I receive answers that look like, 

“It makes me feel at one with myself.”

“Imagine you can make something delicious from raw materials!”

“It’s like meditation.”

“When you know you have it right, it’s the best feeling in the world.” 

I could go on interrogating them, but all these answers are as indecipherable as ancient Greek to me. If the world could be divided into those who enjoy cooking and those who don’t by a thick glass wall — indulge me with a silly metaphor here — then I would probably have my face pressed to it; an outsider looking in, at a world that’s obvious, joyous, colourful, and delicious. And yet, so obviously incomprehensible. 

Back in the present day, I am waiting for the rice to cook. I have somehow managed to make a half-decent bowl of dal while thinking through this essay. Every time I cook, I think maybe if I do it enough number of times, I could actually build a muscle that enjoys it. Maybe I could just learn to look at the kitchen as oasis of peace and pleasure, where I am dancing around creating magic. Surely stranger things have happened, no? 

It’s just then, that I am hit by an smell. An aroma, actually. I am reminded of racing to finish a book during summer vacations while I waited for my mother to serve lunch.

I look at the pot, in trembling hope. Have I done it? Have I, somehow, crossed the invisible glass wall?

The rice is overcooked. 

Oh, well.

“Bride and two Companions” by Jamini Roy.

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