Cookery Shows
By: K S S Pillai
Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone to communicate instantly with those far away. It was considered revolutionary as communication had taken a long time till then. He would not have thought that his invention would undergo many changes and be home to different apps, relegating the original purpose to a minor one.
Today, mobile phones with different facilities are available in the market. The instrument has become an inseparable part of people’s lives, with various apps downloaded.
One of the apps shows how to cook tasty food. Newly married girls who never saw the inside of their kitchens are now regular viewers of these shows so that they can prepare different dishes and be in the good books of all at their husbands’ homes. The shows sometimes provide entertainment along with information on cooking.
The chefs are usually well-dressed young women who start each sentence in English and end it in another language. They show you the ingredients that go into a dish, their quantities and other details. The interviewers taste the cooked food and show through body language that the dish is delicious.
Most of the shows are about non-vegetarian dishes. The cook handles chunks of meat like vegetables, not sparing a thought that they belonged to a live animal a few hours ago. She sometimes cooks crabs and clams, some still alive.
Providing them the same consideration as meat, the cook dumps the entire lot into boiling water and takes out the flesh to prepare dishes. My belief that women are gentle and sympathetic to dumb animals vanishes when I see these shows.
Sometimes, the viewer is taken to roadside eateries that abound in cities. The workers indulge in acrobatic actions to get the attention of bystanders and customers.
If it is a teashop, the person preparing tea pours a stream of the concoction from a mug held high to a glass held far below, turning his body full circle. Another worker then places the glass with frothing tea before the customer with a thud.
In eateries where dishes are prepared from eggs, the cook picks up eggs from a nearby container, breaks them dramatically, puts the contents into a hot tawa over a gas stove, and adds various ingredients to it dramatically. The end product is tossed onto a plate, and the waiting customers are served hot dishes.
Those who sell masala dosas spread the batter onto a hot tawa, and the ingredients from different utensils are sprinkled on it with dancing hands. The dosas are flipped to someone standing a few feet away, who catches them on a plate and puts them before the customer with a flourish.
There is always a crowd of people of all ages before shops selling pani puri, unmindful of cleanliness. They gulp down puris stuffed with various ingredients and spicy water as soon as they are placed on their plates. The case with many other dishes is the same.
Some exhibit how they have defeated the natural law by dipping their bare hands in boiling oil and picking up pakoras or other dishes without any injury.
The videos I like most are those of desert villages in Rajasthan. The background music is soothing. Many lightweight wooden cots woven with rope or other materials lie in the open, where people sleep at night, covering themselves with thick sheets.
Tethered camels, cows, buffaloes and goats munch hay and cut grass leisurely at a distance. While women churn curd diluted with water to make butter, men in white dhoties and full-sleeved shirts with colourful head dresses, sporting bushy moustaches, sit before burning hearths, preparing tea.
They are sometimes shown milking cows or goats and using the fresh, frothy milk to prepare tea. They put all ingredients into the water, and the brew is stirred and boiled for a long time before being strained and poured into shallow bowls held by those waiting.
They often blow into the plates they hold while sipping tea. Men cook thick rotlas over coal hearths, crush them and eat with a liberal quantity of pure ghee and simple dishes.
I often remember these scenes to lessen the shock of receiving telephone bills for hefty amounts.
(The author is a retired professor of English. A regular contributor to ‘The Kashmir Vision’, his articles and short stories have appeared in several national and international publications)
