I used to be the Kitchen Klutz

Sometime last year, some of us friends got together and started an online magazine called S*P*A*M (Society for the Prevention of Absurdity and Madness). We had a very short run because everyone realised that they couldn't spend too much time over something that didn't pay anything except maybe compliments. But while it lasted it was fun.

I was the Kitchen Klutz and I wrote this monthly column about my Misadventures in the kitchen. Each episode saw my alter ego the Kitchen Klutz mess up her kitchen and her food in adventurous ways while her husband looked on indulgently or rather, exasperatedly. I had a whole lot of fun writing that because for once a month I could be this complete idiot who didn't have to be apologetic about her lack of interest in culinary skills.

KK (as I called her in my head) managed to get even the simplest dish wrong. And she was completely fictitious. Oh well, most of the time. Dug up one of her Diwali adventures for a laugh. There was one about tomato soup and it wasn't all fiction. I'd better not put that up here if I want people to continue thinking that this is a food blog!

Having the extended family at my house during festivals is not my idea of fun. I’m not the best hostess to even the most well behaved houseguests but mine are slightly on the rowdy side, as it includes a pair of twin terrors, aged ten years old. Their mother however, whom I still don’t know how we’re related to, is a sweetheart because she happily pushes me out of the kitchen to cook and serve those endless meals. Really. She’s not a hologram or anything. I’ve checked a couple of times much to our combined embarrassment.

Another woman who is more adept in the kitchen would have felt her armour pop up when someone else invades her space but thankfully I’m not like that. I do not have these silly ego hassles about ‘my kitchen, my kingdom’ etc. Although her boys were wrecking my house, using crayons to draw awful murals on the bedroom walls, bringing in mud, sand, insects and amphibians to my bathroom, I was glad that I did not have to slave in the kitchen for them.

On second thoughts, I should have prepared one meal at least. They would have packed their bags and run away but my husband had called me aside before they came, giving me ample warning not to cook anything. Still, it felt odd for me to be lounging in the living room watching TV with the other guests, until it was time for lunch or dinner. But NR doesn’t seem to mind it at all. I’ve nicknamed her NR for Nirupa Roy, the quintessential mother of Bollywood films of the seventies. No prizes for guessing why.

But even NR felt the pressure when Diwali approached as my mother in law suggested that we have a dinner party at my house for everyone. She also vetoed my idea that we get caterers. In fact it was NR who vehemently opposed the caterers. See, I told you, she thrives on being praised and I saw her eyes go all sparkly when my mother in law looked at her, stroked her hair, and looked at me.

On Saturday evening though, I felt smugly satisfied when I saw her chasing her kids out of the kitchen. She looked a mess, with strands of her hair flailing around her face, a look of terror in her eyes and a blotchy apron that she had put on over her sari. I stopped smiling when I realised that I looked exactly like this when I ventured inside to make chapathis or rotis and not a four course dinner like she was preparing.

Uneasily I ventured inside. I couldn’t recognize my kitchen because of all the different aromas that pierced the air.

‘Can I help?’ I asked.

‘I have everything under control’ she said, trying to be at five different places at the same time.

‘Let me help you in something at least’ I offered magnanimously. Surely there was something I could do without messing up.

She looked around swiftly trying to assess which was the easiest task. Apparently news of my talents had spread everywhere.

‘Um, why don’t you remove the pulao on the serving plate? Garnish it with those eggs please? Then after we’ve had the starters, we can pop this in the microwave for a minute and serve it hot?’

It sounded easy and doable to even a klutz like me. I painstakingly shelled the boiled eggs and artfully arranged them on top of the pulao which I had removed on a pretty patterned serving plate.

‘Anything else?’ I asked, whipping around just in time to see those two brats setting off a firecracker inside the house.

When the screams and loud popping subsided, we went back into the kitchen and I wished I’d done more to help but she’d apparently taken care of everything.

Dinner started off on a quiet note although the smell of gun powder was still hanging in the air like a heavy curtain. When everyone had finished the chicken tikkas and paneer pakodas, it was time for the pulao. NR followed me into the kitchen to get the side dish for the pulao while I popped the pulao inside the oven. Just as I set the timer for two minutes, I wondered that the eggs were not in the same position as I’d arranged them before.

‘Did you rearrange the eggs?’ I asked NR who was ladling chicken curry in a bowl.

‘No’ she replied absently.

‘Then...’

We both looked up in horror and turned to the microwave. Her boys had replaced the boiled eggs with fresh ones!

‘Run!’

‘Duck!’

We both screamed as the microwave exploded.

*******************

They say Diwali is one of the most expensive festivals in India. Ask my husband. He knows how much it cost to get the bits of egg spatter, egg shells and pulao rain cleaned from my kitchen ceiling, floor and every possible place. Not to mention the twisted and broken microwave that he’s had to replace. And get the kitchen repainted.

The best outcome of this is that NR and her two boys have gone back. Mother in law purses her lips tightly whenever someone mentions NR’s culinary skills and my husband runs in the opposite direction when he’s confronted with egg pulao.

My kitchen, my kingdom, my microwave have been restored to me and we do what we do best. Reheat packaged meals.