And before Ekta Kapoor, if you ever watched television devoid of the Saas-Bahu sagas you might have come across a chef named Sanjeev Kapoor with a million dollar smile hosting a programme called Khana Khazana cooking delicacies and smiling away to glory. Seeing him host this show for years I had this weired notion that cooking is one of the most fun activities you can ever indulge your own self into. After spending 15 days away from the country in a different continent I can fully vouch that my notion about cooking was as much away from reality as New Delhi is from New York. So everyday on the 4th floor of the Indian hostel in Paris, you would see a cook with as disgusting a look on his face as a person subjected to hours of Sidhuism trying to make some delicate cuisine which finally looking nothing more than blobs of green and red and hating every bit of it.
The only solace is that everybody on the 4th floor except Mushtaq (a lawyer who looks 40 but claims to be 20) hates to cook. Considering the fact that it is easier to procure camel meat rather than proper Indian food at an affordable price in Paris there is no other option than to cook dinner and to pour out obscenities while doing the same. While the lunch always lasts of items like pizza, panini, pasta or burgers, items for which in Paris you spend a fortune when you convert the same into INR from euros. It just took me 3 days to convince my mind not to do the conversion and curse myself for spending a fortune on lunch. So its been poulet(chicken) cheddar or menu viaggio or a thon(tuna) and dinde(turkey) pizza on which I am surviving in Paris. The cooking misadventure started with the ingredient buying misadventure from La Chapelle which happens to be one place in Paris where you will see more saree shops than boutique shops, more hindi and tamil DVDs than French DVDs and more Indians and Sri Lankans than French in general. After the initial delght of finding stuffs that looked Indian the biggest decision that I had to take was what all things I could take to cook. Considering that my knowledge of any kind of recipes was no more than anything which you could count on one hand, it was too easy to make that choice. I bought the bare essentials that Air France had refused to carry with its horrendously low 20 kg restriction and then I set of cooking. And from then on I have cooked egg curry and forgot to put salt in it. I have cooked scrambeled egg and burnt the container in which I was cooking. I have cooked rice that required another round of microwaving after they were cooked to soak up all the water, and I have perfected the art of microwaving already cooked rotis. I guess the same plight is shared by every resident of the 4th floor of Maison De L'Inde well except Mushtaq that is who is ever ready to cook. So we have a Sarathi Da who tried to make a curry out of cucumbers and it turned out to be one of the most disgusting dishes I have ever had in a long time. Then there is Bhaskar Da who stays the life of a bachelor even while being married and curses his post doctoral research for this plight. He has perfected the art of making different kinds of chicken dishes and is one of the most resourceful guys on the floor in whose closet u will find every masala and even ginger garlic paste. Then there is the guy from IIT and the duo from MDI who beleive in nothing but ready to eat menus. I guess the topline of Kohinoor has increased drastically with these guys coming to Paris. And finally there is Prashant who stays with his wife in the hostel and calls me Indhra inspired by a Chiranjeevi movie (supposed to be a big hit) and cooks every night for his wife. Last Sunday he was seen wearing an apron covering him from tip to toe which his wife had bought for him so that his clothes dont get soiled cooking. Its such a nice feeling to see people love each other like this and get closer because of a common dislike for cooking. Evenings in the fourth floor are times when you will find everyone sharing the disgusting things that they have cooked and eating together as if competing for the title of the worst cook. But still its fun....Its the way of life and it is what life together in a hostel means. There are strong attachments that you build waiting for the pressure to build in the pressure cooker to cook your rice, which takes a great deal of time on the hot plates of the hostel. And I guess this one year which would be spent cooking makes me a better cook to share a kitchen and take up half the cooking responsibilities with the one whom I want to share the rest of my life with. Over the phone she has been teaching me a lot of new recipies and so have I been teaching her microwave cooking in which I have perfected myself over years. Aur isiliye mujhe ab se cook na kaho, chef keh lo yaar. Sanjeev Kapoor you better watch out, a competitor is on his way in the romantic city of Paris learning the tricks of the culinary trade.
1 comment:
So, chef endoneel u r having a lifetime experience over there trying to cook(or shud i say inventing new dishes)...with all ur half cooked rice,unsalted curry and the same bhendi fry dish of urs that hear every other night.But "kono bapar na", after the end of this french stay you will still try your luck on how to cook good bengali food, biriyani and chinese as well...because,thats what needed from u and who knows if somebody has already bought an apron for u ;)
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