It was one of those middling Tuesdays when the world can’t decide if it is winter or summer. After breakfast, I was parked on the balcony, staring at the neem tree in the garden below. The missus, ever solicitous, mistook my reverie for distress.
“What are you brooding about now?” she asked.
“Nothing,” I replied. My ‘Nothing’ means nothing—unlike hers, which often contains a grievance or two.
“Why don’t you pick up a hobby? Something to keep you occupied,” she suggested brightly, as though hobbies could be ordered for delivery in 10 minutes via Blinkit.
“Sitting on this balcony, doing nothing, keeps me occupied enough!” I protested.
She pulled that face—the one that says, “I may have married you, but I could have done better.” So, in a flash of misguided genius, I blurted, “But if you insist, I’ll take up cooking. You’ll thank me because it will also lighten your load.”
My cooking résumé was short but sparkling. Boy Scout campfires had taught me that fire is hot and food requires it. Then, in my glorious bachelor days, I gained more knowledge and, in my modest way, mastered the art of making tea. I daresay that, over the years, I even learnt how to boil an egg. I know it was not cordon bleu stuff, but it was close. Quite close.
Cooking certainly seemed the path to glory. Sitting on the balcony I daydreamt of astonishing the missus with dish after dish so divine that even the gods up on Olympus would drool over them. I pictured Sunday supplement headlines screaming: ‘Behold the king of the kitchen! See the maestro at work, with his no-frills artistry. Witness the gleaming perfection of culinary finesse of the kitchen virtuoso who prepares divine dishes with aplomb!’
Alas, the kitchen is the fortress of the missus. Every time I tried to enter, she shooed me away like a stray cat. Patience, I told myself. Patience! Patience is the secret weapon of the retired. Opportunity knocked on the last Thursday of the month—her sacred kitty-party day. The moment the door clicked shut behind her, I slunk into the kitchen.
What a shock awaited me there! Chaos, disorder and utter anarchy! Pots and pans stacked in defiance of gravity, size, and basic logic. Spoons and forks scandalously cohabiting inside the same drawer. The chopping board without any clear indication which side was up. But the masalas! Oh, the masalas were the true horror. I was overwhelmed by the jars of mismatched sizes, labels in faded cursive, and nightmarish conflicts of labels and contents.
I abandoned any thought of cooking. Instead, I decided to make the ultimate romantic gesture: reorganise the entire kitchen into ergonomic perfection. A gift from a devoted husband to wife. A love sonnet expressed in alphabetised spice jars!
Armed with Google Lens and the indomitable Opera browser, I laboured for nearly two hours. It was deeply satisfying to arrange the containers alphabetically—agar-agar, Ajinomoto, ajwain, allspice, amchur, anar dana, anise, asafoetida; followed by basil, bay leaf, black pepper, black salt and so on—all the way to vanilla and white pepper. I even prepared a short briefing note for enlightenment of the missus. These were helpful tips—small, but important, including how to avoid procurement asymmetry. Can you imagine holding in stock more than half a kilo of salt and, incongruously, just two grams of saffron?
Job done, I waited, barely able to suppress my excitement. I could just imagine the look of delight and gratitude on my wife’s face once she saw her reorganised kitchen. So, when she returned, I ushered her into her fortress like royalty.
“Ta-daaa!”
She stared, stunned. And then she started screaming.
“Is this what you call your bloody hobby? Don’t you ever dare come near my kitchen again!”
Not quite the gratitude I had anticipated. When the missus declares war, strategic withdrawal is wisdom, not cowardice. I spent the evening beneath the neem tree, pondering life’s injustices.
By dinner time she had simmered down. I ventured: “I was only trying to help, dear.”
“Help,” she muttered, “is washing dishes without being asked.”
“But we have Phulwanti for that.”
“Phulwanti has vanished since last week. Probably gone forever, without a word.”
So, it fell on me to be the volunteer floor-sweeper-cum-dishwasher extraordinaire.
“Think of it as your new hobby,” the missus said, eyes twinkling with pure evil.
I swept the house with great vigour and got a “shabaash!” from the missus. “You do it so well. When you swish that broom, I can still see the power of your tennis backhand. Like in college!”
Done with sweeping, I took her frilly pink apron off the peg and attacked the dishes. From the kitchen door, the missus called my name.
I turned—click—camera flash!
“This is for my Instagram,” she declared.
Next morning, I knew something was amiss when my friend Gopu called. “You look so nice in pink,” he giggled and disconnected.
I wondered what that was about.
I checked Instagram—there was my photograph with me looking mildly surprised. The caption read—‘#BeholdtheKingoftheKitchen! See the maestro at work in pink frilly splendour. Witness the legendary grace of this scrubbing divinity, washing dishes to gleaming perfection.’
2,047 likes. 57 reposts. And rising!
It’s clear I will not find a place in the culinary hall of fame for my biryani or butter chicken. But I will certainly be immortalised—because of viral humiliation in a pink frilly apron!
K.C. Verma is former chief of R&AW. kcverma345@gmail.com