I spent most of my twenties working very hard on not learning how to cook. I lived alone for long stretches of time, once or twice in houses that had kitchens and fridges filled with food and cupboards laden with spices and, yet, I resisted. Instead, I ate toast and chips and biscuits dipped in jam. I was that single person buying those ready-to-eat meals, paying way too much for the comfort of being able to take this food home and eat it in front of my laptop and not have to talk to anyone in between.

I had no patience for sensible people who told me to stop wasting money, that restaurant food was overpriced garbage, that packaged food had no nutrients. I listened in horror as my well-intentioned landlady advised me to go to the market on Saturday mornings, buy vegetables and then cook and freeze five dishes so that I could then re-heat and eat them over the week. I have to admit that I was flattered that she thought I knew where the market was and also that I would know what to do with a vegetable once I was alone with it. I imagined what my face would feel like staring into the freezer every morning and I was sure that no money saved could be worth that chill, the sadness of fingertips on frozen plastic.

Thus, I fumbled along. Spending too much money, being vaguely poor and hungry most of the time. It felt like the right thing to do. I was running away from domesticity, from the women on TV selling laundry detergent and cooking oil. I would not cook for people and I would not be judged on how that food tasted.

At some point on this journey of melodrama, a very sensible friend pointed out that cooking has nothing to do with gender. It is a life-skill that anyone who eats should learn.

And so I tried. I bought a cookbook and, since I had no idea what I was doing, I chose the one with the prettiest cover. Though I have since learned to love this book, I will admit that in the beginning, I nearly boiled it. Like many cookbooks, it worked on the premise that the person holding the book already knew many things about cooking. I stood in front of my stove, spoon in hand, frowning at the cookbook, wondering what in the world “splatter mustard seeds” meant.

Like many people in the world today, I put the book away and turned to the internet. I was not disappointed. Online, I found enthusiastic people ready to help. People who had the time and patience to photograph the exact hue that roasted urad should be. Kind souls who could explain all the things you were too embarrassed to admit that you didn’t know — how to peel garlic, how to wash rice, how to cut an onion.

I dived into unknown links, opened multiple tabs with aplomb and made notes that eventually became oil-soaked and mysterious. Alone in my kitchen, there were no awkward territorial skirmishes with my mother. Even the slenderest doubt could be instantly cleared up with Google. I learned to relax. I overcame my fear of pressure cookers.

I never felt alone on this adventure of learning how to cook. My kitchen was always crowded. I had gangs of food bloggers perched on my countertops, leaning back on my sink, watching as I burned, spilled, misjudged. They walked me through those sticky first steps. They eased my troubles with soothing sentences that began, “Don’t worry if…”

I learned from vegan bloggers and bloggers who drowned everything in butter. Those who thrived on cooking with one pot and those who were all about finishing a meal in 10 minutes flat. I met bloggers who melted chocolate bars and bloggers who boiled ketchup. I came across homesick bloggers whose recipes for lemon rice disintegrated into moving essays on their grandmothers and solitary engineering students in Scotland who weighed and measured both their ingredients and the finished products.

There was the palpable sadness of a blog that no one ever commented on. There were the innumerable blogs run by robots and there were ones that were trying to sell you everything from aprons to cutting boards to personality development.

Today, I think of how I have settled into domesticity like a fat orange cat on a sofa and how my 20-year-old self would have died of shame. These days I brew my own ginger beer and sometimes bake just to fill my house with the incredible fragrance of chocolate brownies. I have learned to enjoy that moment of silence at a dinner table when no one is talking because they are too busy eating. I have finally understood what all those Masterchef contestants were blubbering about — that love can flow through food.

In the days to come, as the year winds down, I will trawl websites for ‘easy Indian sweet recipes’. I will inexpertly make these and share them with the neighbours I hardly know. Over time, I believe, we will not be such strangers. When we cross each other in the hallways, our eyes will light up with recognition and we will smile at each other. We would have shared food, and laughed over the fact that no one could identify the sweet I had made. And then, just like that, life becomes a little sweeter, the heart a little happier.

Snigdha Manickavel is a Chennai-based writer

Related Topics
comment COMMENT NOW