pravind kumar

Abstract Inspirational

4.0  

pravind kumar

Abstract Inspirational

Cooking, Cardamom & Writing

Cooking, Cardamom & Writing

4 mins
318


The tea is on the stove, waiting to boil and for the color of the leaves to seep into milky water. My friends are waiting. I like making tea. My friends like the tea I make: less sugar, just the right strength, and equal amounts of water and milk, boiled to that perfect brown and my signature two fully peeled and mashed cardamoms. Elaichai, a short form for Elaichi chai, as my friends refer to it.

 

I find cooking very satisfying, almost like writing. Consider this: no two teas that I make taste exactly the same. Like how no two stories – even if with the same plot – that I write read the same. I end up using words differently, new ideas crop up during writing which percolates into my prose. Even if I were to write two letters on the same topic as above at two different times, the wording will differ. I might not have started with the tea being on the stove, a reality now at the time of writing. I might have started with the weather, for instance. 

 

I think both writing and cooking give you the power of taking each and every decision in the process. Basically, it lets you be the god of your creation. Right from deciding which utensils to choose to what should be the intensity of the flame, from the first line of your story to how long the story is going to be, it is an act of constant decision-making at your behest. True, there are lots of trials and errors, good and bad decisions, edits, and backspaces during each such undertaking, but mistakes make the process so enriching and full of surprises. No true cook can become good by only trying out the age-old recipes, much like how no writers can ever be original if they churn out clichés. Experimentation is the way to be, the way to grow.

 

A cook blends vegetables and spices to get that particular flavor to their dish like a writer mixes words like colors to concoct newer expressions to convey what’s been lurking in their imagination. And of course, you taste what you cook after every simmer to ascertain if it’s good enough, it’s cooked enough if it’s suitable to your palate and could be served to your friends waiting at the dining table. A writer is no different. After writing every paragraph, sometimes every line, we tend to read and reread, speak out loud, to make sure it sounds good to the ears, that it will be palatable to the reader. 

 

Two peeled and mashed cardamoms are my signature ingredients. They make its taste unique, so unique that a regular drinker can sniff it from the smell, a taste that you cannot forget. You will straightaway deduce that I made the tea. Writers call this style. Every writer who has discovered their voice, after years of practice, has perfected a style that is uniquely their own. Their special ingredient, their cardamom. For Salman Rushdie, it’s the effortless usage of Hindi and Urdu words in his English prose. He named a mute character Bezubaan in one of his books. For the Indian writer Manu Joseph, it’s clever allegorical humor. Consider this quote from his book Serious Men: “The fate of every love story, he knew very well, is in the rot of togetherness, or in the misery of separation. Lovers often choose the first with the same illusory wisdom that makes people choose to die later than now.” For Jhumpa Lahiri, it’s the ease with which she describes the slow and gradual process of a woman falling out of love in many of her works. For me, it’s the love for cities and how they differ from each other that makes my writing my own. What’s your cardamom? 

 

My friends ask me if I were to choose between writing and cooking, which one would it be? It’s a difficult question, especially since both are so liberating, so fulfilling, but I choose writing. When asked why my answer usually is: “The food I cook tastes best only when served hot. The words I cook taste best only when they pass the test of time.” The immortality of words wins the battle for me.

 

I am going back to the kitchen, to serve my signature elaichai to my friends. Meanwhile, here’s a parting quote for you by the writer Truman Capote: “Oh, I adore to cook. It makes me feel so mindless in a worthwhile way.”


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