Since my father was in the Army, my mother brought us up almost single-handedly (except for a few 3-year periods in between, when we lived with my dad).
When your father is posted in some border area and comes home only on leave, the mother can only run her house like an Army unit. So, very early in life, my sisters and I were her little jawans.
By the time I reached 5th standard, I had started washing my own clothes and also ironing them. By 6th standard, I had started helping my mother in the kitchen by making rotis. Not round rotis…just rotis.
Some were shaped like India & Pakistan before we were split and some looked like Sri Lanka, but then we were a family that believed in ‘Vasudhaiva Kutumbakam’ so no complaints.
So technically, I am not completely useless in the kitchen. As of today, I don’t cook much, but I can be handy around the kitchen.
I can make tea. I can cut vegetables. Make kids lunch. I can wash vessels. I can locate the pressure cooker without asking Rekha.
These are not small achievements for an Indian man.
But for the sake of this article, let us assume I am like most Indian men – confident outside the kitchen, confused inside it, and fully capable of asking, “Where is the plate?” while standing in front of it.
Now that this lie has been accepted by both writer and reader, let us proceed.
There are certain places in the house where a man should not enter with too much confidence.
For instance, living room when it is being mopped, the bathroom after it has been cleaned, the cupboard when she is rearranging clothes, and the kitchen when she is cooking.
In most Indian homes, the Chief of Kitchen Operations is the wife and the husband is allowed to enter only under supervision. That too, preferably for drinking water and leaving immediately.
If you are unmarried, you may think, “What is the big deal? I also cook Maggi.”
Poor you. That’s not going to win you any women. Maggi is not cooking.
Cooking is when five plus things happen at the same time – two cookers and one frying pan are on the stove, but still somehow three whistles go off, oil starts spluttering, one vegetable is half-cut, one dal is almost done, pepper powder is missing but the search is on, and you are damn sure that you bought coriander but it’s not there in the fridge, and among all this…you wonder if you should quickly wash your lunch box before the fourth whistle goes off, because you were too tired to wash it last night.
Now, that’s cooking.
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The other day, I made an error of judgement. Rekha was in the kitchen making lunch, and everything was going well when I made the grave mistake of watching an Instagram reel with slightly higher volume.
I shouldn’t have done that, because as soon as Rekha heard it, she found out that her husband was having fun. In case you didn’t know, wives don’t like that. But they don’t want you to know that they don’t like it when you are having fun…so they punish you after some time.
My wife continued with her cooking, and then to fetch something…she opened the fridge. That’s when I heard something fall.
Now, a good husband will go and ask, “Do you need help?”
A smart husband will pretend he did not hear anything.
Unfortunately, that day my guard was down and I walked into the kitchen and said, “Need any help?”
Rekha looked at me with suspicion. That’s the problem with wives, even when they have already been married for 20+ years…they think we are trying to score them.
Because in marriage, when a husband suddenly offers help he has either made a huge mistake or wants a…well…let’s just call it “an invitation to love.”
She asked, “Why?”
I said, “Nothing. I thought I’ll help.”
She looked at me for two seconds…and I could tell at that moment she had very low opinion of me. But I didn’t care…after all it lasted only two seconds.
Finally she said, “Okay. Cut these onions.”
I should have turned back pretending as if I didn’t hear anything.
But I stayed because we Rajans can go to war for our women. If I were Paris, the prince of Troy, she definitely would be Helen, the Queen of Sparta.
We Rajans would rather love for a day, than live forever. Yes, ma’am…we are romantics like that.
So there I was, standing in Rekha’s kitchen with three onions and a knife.
I picked up the first onion.
Rekha immediately said, “Not that knife.”
I had not even started.
This is the thing about helping wives. Your first mistake happens before the work begins.
I asked, “Which knife?”
“That one.” She pointed to the knife stand in general.
There were six knives. Since these knives were not bought as a set but accumulated in the last few years, their handles were different – some plastic, some wooden and some metal.
I got philosophical…aren’t we all humans just like these knifes…set out to do one good job, but differentiated by the World based on our colour, religion and caste.
If we shouldn’t differentiate between humans, why should knives be any different, I wondered.
Rekha tapped me on the shoulder and brought me back to reality. Then she explained – apparently, each knife had a role. There is one for vegetables, one for fruits, one for bread, one for meat and believe it or not we have a knife for opening milk packets as well.
I pointed to a shiny one in the corner and asked, “And that?”
That was brought by my brother in law from Japan. We don’t use that…that’s for guests to see and say, “Nice knife.”
Rekha still hadn’t said which knife I must use to cut the onions, so I picked another one.
Rekha said, “Not that. The smaller one.”
I picked the smaller one.
She said, “Not that small.”
This is the curse of being a man. You will always choose between wrong and also wrong.
Finally, she came, picked the knife herself, and gave it to me.
“Use this.”
I held the knife like a newly recruited dacoit in the Chambal Valley who had just been handed his first weapon by the gang leader.
By the way, did you know that the the iconic cinematic villain Gabbar Singh from the 1975 blockbuster film Sholay was inspired by Gabbar Singh Gujjar, a real-life bandit who terrorized the Chambal valley?
Anyway, lets now get back to the Gabbar Singh of my life. I had just started cutting the onions, when Rekha looked at me and said, “Why are you cutting it like that?”
I said, “Like what?”
“So big-big.”
I said, “It will anyway become small while cooking.”
She stared at me. It didn’t seem like a ‘regular look.’ If you have been married long enough you can tell between a ‘regular look’ and a ‘warning look’.
“Cut it fine,” she said.
Now, “fine” is one of the most dangerous words in marriage.
I am not a revolutionary like Mangal Pandey…no sir…we Rajans may be brave, but we love our life as well. So tried cutting the onions smaller.
And that’s when I realised that my wife is like an onion. If you think carefully, you will realize that an onion respects nobody. It does not care whether you are founder, CEO, writer, father, or taxpayer. It will make you cry.
Rekha saw my eyes and said, “Already crying?”
I said, “It is the onion.”
She said, “Of course.”
That “of course” was not about onion.
That “of course” meant, “You men cry for everything.”
I didn’t take that seriously because she wasn’t talking about me but she was attacking 50.26% of the World population – the men.
Did you know that in the World there are 101 men for every 100 women?
If whole of the World was made up of Indians, these numbers would have been 110 men for every 100 women, because strangely we would have ‘preferred the stronger sex’ (men) over the ‘even stronger sex’ (women).
By now both my eyes were leaking, and everything in front of me was blurry. But thanfully the onion cutting was over.
After onions, Rekha said, “Cut tomatoes.”
If I have to pick two vegetables to represent a man and a woman, I would say women are the onions while men are the tomatoes.
Onions are aggressive, and we tomatoes are friendlier.
Just think about it – the onions have so many layers and make you cry, while the tomatoes are so soft that one cut and the juice comes out, the seeds come out, and the whole tomato collapses onto the cutting board.
Now that its settled that women are onions and men are the softies, let me tell you what happened as soon as I was done cutting one tomato.
Rekha looked at the cutting board and asked, “What have you done?”
“I cut tomato.”
“No…you have murdered it!” She exclaimed.
I looked at it. She was not wrong. The tomato looked like it had met with a road accident.
She took the next tomato and cut it in five seconds. Perfect pieces.
I made a mental note…someday I am going to get better at this.
When I cut vegetables, it looks like a crime scene but when Rekha cuts vegetables it looks like she used her geometry box.
Apparently she learnt it from her dad, who I can vouch was a far better cook that Rekha.
Then she gave me coriander and said, “Ok…now remove the leaves.”
I was relieved. I muttered under my breath, “finally, something at my level” and started removing leaves.
After some time, Rekha looked at the plate and said, “Why are you removing one leaf at a time?”
I said, “You said remove leaves.”
She said, “Not like that.”
I said, “Then how?”
She took the bunch, twisted something, pulled something, and suddenly coriander became ready.
I don’t know what she did but I was so impressed…I almost fell in love with her again. Trust me…it was like watching a magician remove a pigeon from a handkerchief.
I said, “How did you do that?”
She said, “Common sense.”
I have noticed this.
When women know something, it is common sense. When men don’t know it, it is incompetence. This World is stacked against us men, and the problem is…we men think we are in control.
By now, I had been in the kitchen for fifteen minutes. At this moment I could have been called a pro.
My respect for Rekha had increased but so had my desire to leave the kitchen and get back to my Instagram reels.
But for a man leaving a kitchen midway is not easy ….at least not for us Rajans because we are also known as the Kings of Commitment.
Once we commit to a task, we stay committed till the end. Or till Rekha says, “Move, you’re standing in the way.” Whichever comes first.
Suddenly Rekha said, “Stir this.”
I was immediately excited. This was my area of specialization…even men who cannot cook can stir.
Give a man ten minutes of stirring task and you may have turned him to a confident World leader.
I stood near the stove and started stirring the curry.
Rekha said, “Slowly.”
But the moment I slowed down, she said, “Not that slowly.”
And the moment I increased the speed, she said, “Don’t break the pieces.”
So I reduced pressure. But she won’t stop…for now my instructions from, “From the sides.”
And as I started to focus on the sides, she yet again looked at me and said, “Don’t focus on only the sides.”
By now I had realized that stirring was like running a country, and you were bound to be pulled in all directions. Or wait…it is like raising teenagers – you can’t be too tight with them or too lose.
In a way we Rajans are like Socrates and Aristotle…we are thinkers. But very often, our deep thinking is interrupted by mundane things of regular human beings – like this time when the mustard seeds started spluttering in another pan.
I jumped back.
Rekha said, “Why are you jumping?”
“Oil is spluttering,” I exclaimed pointing to the pan.
“So what…you are not a kid.”
“It is hot, isn’t it?” I insisted.
At that moment, I realised why women are stronger than men. They never needed extra muscles to be strong.
It is because since childhood they have been trained by onions, pressure cookers, hot oil, relatives asking ‘what will you do when you go to your husband’s house’ and parents asking ‘when they will have children’.
Men have no chance against them.
After spending 20 minutes in the kitchen I understood why women sometimes get irritated when people eat without saying anything.
Imagine standing in the kitchen for one hour, fighting heat, oil, timing, salt, pressure cooker, and one husband, and then everyone eats in silence.
That’s why that day when we were having lunch, I said “Very nice.”
Rekha said, “What is nice?”
With men, “it is nice” works. When you are trying out a new beer, and your friend asks how it is, you can say “nice!” and walk away. But not if it’s a lady.
Rekha wanted specifics and I couldn’t have said “everything.”
Everything means I did not notice anything. So I said, “Sambar is very nice. Tomato has blended well.”
She looked at me and said, “Tomato has blended because you crushed it in an accident.”
I said, “So I contributed…right?,” I asked reluctantly.
She smiled. It was a small smile, but for today that was enough.