A recipe for life
It was half past 12 on a Thursday afternoon.
I was beside my mom in kitchen trying to help her make a veg pulao. The four of us including my dad and my younger brother were tired of the famous trio, sambhar, rasam & poriyal.
So we decided to do pulao for a change and I volunteered to help.
Before we got together the ingredients, my mom turned to me and said “I’ve cooked this a hundred times and served you all, why don’t you tell me what ingredients should we use and I’ll add them as you tell”. I looked at the wall in front of me trying to remember the last time I had the pulao, and it was maybe three weeks ago sometime in the beginning of the month. I started off with peas which was the usual part of any vegetable rice, then the onions and tomatoes the 2 basic ingredients of any cooking with chilli powder and salt.
I tried to remember the other ingredients but all I could think of was, the season 3 of friends I was watching for the hundredth time, remember what Chandler spoke to Monica while Joey came in the room. I was able to remember the work that I had to finish that day, a fight that we had with the client, the no. of chai’s we had too, but not the ingredients for the Pulao.
I paused and tried to remember the breakfast I had today morning and yes bang, it was idly and a chutney. But what did the chutney have and how many idlys did I gobble up. Again all I could remember was a fight that I had with my friend over call when I gobbled down the idly and the season 4 game of thrones repeat that came on the TV.
I put on a sorry face and I turned towards mom and confessed to her that I couldn’t recollect a lot of them. Maybe we’ve heard our dad or mom say that they couldn’t forget the Kurma that their mom used to make or the taste of poriyal that was too spicy for them to handle or the smell of sambar that even Ratna Cafe can’t beat.
With a lot to catch up in this ever changing environment, we don’t spend our time looking back on things. We try to multi-task even with the simplest of things like having our breakfast, a meal at the restaurant with our friends and clicking a thousand pictures of a statue we visit for the first time in another country.
I’m really not sure what’s important in a world running towards the next big thing, coming up with the next big idea or even solving the next UX problem for Facebook. Sometimes, looking back and remembering every ingredient and recreating a simple veg pulao that reminds me of mom with every bite I take and savor it till the end, is my recipe for success.
