Kitchen Stories (Part I)

Every kitchen here has stories that remain unsaid, efforts that go unacknowledged, and memories of blisters, burns, and isolation. This is an effort to bring those stories to your notice.

Kitchen Green

This kitchen probably lost all its conventional femininity the day I left her. Chances are, this is the most organized and well-planned kitchen I have ever come across, for it was something I had dreamt of for years. It was my first kitchen. Not that I hadn’t come across a kitchen in my twenty years of life, but this one was mine. My own. Something that will forever hold a special place in my heart.

The amateur but eager homemaker in me tried her best to make a home out of the Green kitchen.

Glass containers, curated wine glasses, ceramic coffee mugs, sexy knives—and my inability to put the perfect amount of salt in anything I cooked. Times when you miss your mother.

Though dreams were lived here, dreams come true at their own cost. The sweet belief that nothing comes for free. I had to learn how to cook food—by which I mean real food. Food that you consume on a daily basis. This kitchen made me realize that cooking as a hobby and cooking as a regular obligation are completely different things. I had always loved cooking for people I loved. It gave me a certain joy. But when I had to cook daily meals, I realized it wasn’t my thing.

I felt isolated doing all the chores alone and tired. It was on one of these occasions, when I was drained, exhausted, and crashed on the kitchen floor, that my then-partner did all the dishes for me. Maybe it was the bare minimum, but I have heard stories of Nivedita Menon-reading, JNU-going men leaving biryani plates for their girlfriends. So, the idea of the bare minimum is blurred.

Nevertheless, first times will always remain special, and so will this kitchen. All bachelor  stories of ashing cigarettes in the sink and eating off the cooking pot will stay with me forever.