My experiments without mom

A peculiar situation on the domestic front. Each time I visit my parents I resolutely decide to be on my guard against sloth. But after a week or so, it starts to infiltrate into my brain like an old familiar friend and I just lie around and … eat… and sleep. This is exactly why I decided to travel in the first place. People often think that travellers travel coz of an itch in their pants to see places, have new experiences and for spiritual growth. Nonsense! Mostly its because we have nothing better to do and have some spare cash lying around. Yeah guys go on and be jealous !

That's my story anyway. Too many comforts and life slowly slips into auto gear and Pan starts to wither away. Life becomes predictable and I start taking people and things for granted. Undoubtedly if I live in Trivandrum all the time, it’s a very shitty place to live in. It’s only because I travel to even more shitty places that Trivandrum looks hopelessly perfect to me now. My friends here just don’t get it.

As I was saying, a peculiar situation at home. The major causative factor for sloth is mom, or her indulgence. (We have a saying in Malayalam which means if something's shitty in your life , blame it on mom ! )This holiday I really decided to cut the sloth. I packed off mathaji to an Ayurvedic centre for 10 days to rest and heal her worsening arthritis. Rest from 35 years of non stop labour. I expected her to swoon and thank me endlessly but all she could think about was how we were going to eat ! 

So as she was chilling out, getting her systems tuned and oiled, it was up to sis and me to enter the dreaded space called kitchen. Mom had helpfully left behind recipies of some dishes we could attempt. The opening day’s performance, dosa was a runaway success. I’m now a certified Ghee roast specialist. Ha that was easy! Somewhere in the middle of the 2nd day, Dad inexplicably not satisfied with our excellent culinary skills, gave full powers to the maid to manage lunch and dinner. Apparently our innovations with coconut, chillies and coriander were just not working for him! But sis and I brushed aside this minor setback  and held our fort for breakfast. Dad was forced to eat half cooked appams and passable (just) upmas. 

But it was all good  fun and more importantly woke me up in the morning instead of stumbling out of bed with The Hindu. On the plus side of life without amma, the house is quieter and I get nagged less. The fridge is half empty because we chucked out all the unidentifiable fungal food stuff. Some of the objects excavated were turned over to the Archeological Survey of India.

So if you’re experiencing apathy in your life, blame it on mom but at the same time why not give her a break? Get zing back into your life and learn the hard way that the life in the kitchen ain't no cat walk !

19 comments:

  1. well, yeah am jealous...!!

    moving on, hmm since you travel a lot, which means you are on your own most of the time, i thought your culinary skills would be much better than what you have mentioned...!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Well, nothing beats Mom's cooking and as a fellow amateur cook, I admire your half-cooked appams because hey, at least they were half cooked!And I agree with you because many times we take what our mom's do on a daily basis for granted.

    ReplyDelete
  3. i wish ur dahlin angel the fastest recovery!!:)
    yupp..most often its the overcaring moms hu has the dumbest kids!!
    am also on tat list??r u??

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hey! Just stumbled across your blog and loved the post. Nice try at the appams, those are tough to make! And I think we should all stop to appreciate what our moms do for us every day

    ReplyDelete
  5. Arch Survey of India.. hehehehe!
    I want to taste your barely passable upma for some reason.. ;)

    ReplyDelete
  6. All the best to ur culinary skills! It might be of use after ur wedding! :P :P

    ReplyDelete
  7. well Sneha, actually although i do travel alone a lot, i seduce unsuspecting women so that i can have home cooked dinners all the time. Leaving fantasy aside, yes, my culinary skills are pretty limited. :(

    ReplyDelete
  8. Jeeves you take optimism to a new level with your comment on half cooked appams. You should have seen the look on my dad's face though...lol !

    ReplyDelete
  9. Vishwa, i like ur theory, now i know who to blame 4 my dumbness ! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Hey Priya, thanks for stumbling in and hope to see more such stumbles here in future. GENERAL VERY IMPORTANT UPDATE : I have finally mastered the appam !!! yesssss! :P

    ReplyDelete
  11. Hmmm Elmo, are you strangely drawn to men who burn their toast ? or worse still drawn to the burnt toast itself? ;) i think a couple of more tries and i can manage to do a decent upma ! :)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Ah Shalini, thanks for your 'concern' and 'best wishes'.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hiii!! My mom has gotten me addicted to Ayurvedic remedies :) I hope that someday I acquire real culinary skills...that will be the day...

    ReplyDelete
  14. I'm a homebody, never liked traveling and ever since I became a mom myself, I appreciated my mom for all she's done for me. When I was young, I used to be resentful and pissed at my mom when I didn't get what I wanted but now I see I recycle her words of wisdoms when I discipline my kids.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Yep Saumya, attaining real culinary skills really does seem like a distant dream for most of us :(

    ReplyDelete
  16. This comment has been removed by the author.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Rosebelle, i think its something we all go through , swallowing our once 'wise' statements to our parents and i like the new uses youve found for 'recycling' !

    ReplyDelete
  18. I blame Mom.
    Now that there is a saying for it, that just backs it up. :)))

    My experiments in the kitchen are usually restricted to bread and maggi but on days when Mom isn't home, well lets just say I would do the Chinese people proud because my roti resembles the shape of their country a lot.

    I can do dosa though but I never get the appams right, is there like some secret ?

    ReplyDelete
  19. bb, yeah we Mallus are pretty advanced that way, having a legit saying for finding fault with mom for everything thats wrong in the universe ! ;) liked the chinese roti bit...lol... appams are very tricky. we have a special hollow iron vessel for that. maybe coz of it and also the doughs consistency it comes out ok !

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for taking the time to write :)