Not exactly a year-ender kind of story. But I was thinking yesterday I should write about cooking and I haven’t written anything in the blog or a diary for a long time. All the writing has been for work that I forgot how I wrote like without a word limit or newspaper guidelines. Not that I am a strict follower of either. See, how I talk about writing on something and then goes on about something entirely different. Yeah, newspapers don’t really like that.
Good thing about blog is you can abruptly come back to topics. You don’t need to find that sentence that would connect two entirely stranger lines. You know, for the flow. So I am going to jump into cooking. Though again I am going to slightly divert by saying I have just discovered Nick Brake and listening to his words, I feel I should be writing like that, words that crawl over from the screen to all your senses.
I bet Nick would have written so neatly about cooking. My version is only about the change in the way I look at it. Today, I watch a video with yummy food and I want to create it, and have it. As a child I wouldn’t go anywhere near a kitchen for fear that I will forever be stranded there because I was a girl and that’s where all girls were supposed to end up in. I am now curious to know how that struck me so young, how I got it in me to question why my dad or Nish, my brother, were not cooking and mom did everything. No one answered it’s because mom liked cooking. “It’s because she was a woman”. But what I didn’t realise then is mom also liked cooking. She is an artist. She draws, paints beautiful pictures. And she cooks, creates beautiful dishes. Why didn’t I connect it like that? This was all way before I knew anything about feminism or equality. My simplistic solution was to be a boy and then not have to do anything. Not because I was lazy, I just couldn’t stand the injustice that I had to do something only because I was a girl.
I regret now that I delayed trying cooking so much. If I had started early, I might have got good at it. By the time I realised I like it, I was mad that such an old me had to find out all about it from scratch. I am thanking four people here – my mom, Kutty Pillai, Chacko and the internet (yes, people). Creating something that I like, that people I like will like. How can it be demeaning? It is much of art, it is entirely art. Like a palate of colours you have little dishes with beautiful ingredients. No one looks at a painting and says, bah that’s lowly work, it’s for women. Only problem is if cooking is forced on someone because that someone is a woman. You do something because you like to do it. When it is because you have to do it, it stops being art. It is forced, it is unpleasurable, it is unfair, it is not even paid like a job you are stuck at.
See, how I messed all that up. Help me, Nick. But then writing is an art too. And I enjoy writing – which doesn’t mean I am good at it. I enjoy cooking, again, not at all because I am good at it. I barely know to put things together – like I said I started late. But when those things I put together make sss-ing sounds and melt in the mouth and squeeze shut the eyes in pure enjoyment, all’s so well. Who cares if I am a woman or a witch?
Story of a lost journalist 