It was nothing but a usual grocery shopping day. I was at Lulu Hypermarket, a place where people from the state of Kerala, perhaps spent a considerable percentage of their time in life to pick up groceries and other household items.
I was at an area in the store
where emotions had no role to play. But that was not the case for me.
Especially when I am at the vegetables section and every time I walk past the aisle
where they placed cabbages, I could hear the entire world laughing at me. The
incident that triggered this emotional roller coaster in my mind happened a few
years ago.
It was a summer vacation time.
I was alone in Dubai and my family had gone back home to India. The culinary scientist
in me decided to prepare a typical Kerala dish made of cabbage and coconut. It
was supposed to be one of the simplest recipes that could be achieved by even
the least of the chefs. I did exactly that.
The dish was ready soon, and
I was absolutely delighted with the master chef in me who could give life to such
wonderful creations. Alas! There was no one to testify that. Nevertheless, destiny
had other plans. Before I closed the pan in which the cabbage dish was made, I
decided to apply the spirit of a true-to-heart experimental personality.
I did not even think twice
before I took half a sliced lemon and squeezed the entire content of that pure
sourness into the heavenly dish I just finished preparing. Needless to say, it
didn’t occur to me to experiment with a smaller quantity. Instead, I applied
the lemon all over the dish! It was time to taste the most unique cabbage
preparation in the world. My taste buds tingled with flavours that are unknown
to mankind. It indeed was unique in all respects. All what it took was less
than a fraction of a second for the whole serving to swiftly find its way to
the trash can. It was a disaster to say the least.
To be true to my most
innocent self, I promptly narrated the whole story to my family. Instead of pats
of empathy and hugs of consolation, I was a victim of the most ruthless form of
cynicism that I became the epitome of someone who belonged to a space farthest
from the kitchen.
All these and more from the
deepest trenches of my painful memories from the past came marching back when I
saw a cabbage looking at me from a rack of Lulu that day. The wounded, but not
dead warrior I am, rose up from the predicted doom by the world around me. I
grabbed a beautiful looking cabbage weighing about a kilogram and promptly headed
home with a steely determination to prove to the universe what it really meant
to be a master chef.
I reached home and in no time
one of the best cabbage dishes was ready. The other great chef at home even
certified it as perfect. I have lived my dream. My disturbed spirit now experiences
an unparalleled bliss.
Moral of the story: Be
it home or office, make mistakes, take on all the rubbish that come your way,
but ensure that you live another day to prove to the world your true worth!
