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Chicken soup for the male soul
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The greatest of male cooks are not caught in the "thought cycle" of food while the most liberated of women go to bed thinking of next morning's breakfast. BAGESHREE S. goes on the boil on the unfairness of it all.
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The cooking male is still an exotic specimen.
"WONDER WHY they call good cooking Nala paaka!" exclaims 56-year-old Sharada whenever she is absolutely fed up with her husband and son who rarely touch the ladle to even serve themselves.
Generations of women may have spent half their lives within the four walls of the kitchen, and may have been defined by the cycle of breakfasts, lunches, and dinners they prepared, but men tend to appear on the scene like magic, when food translates to money and fame. From the mythical Nala and Bheema to the modern day five-star hotel chefs, restaurateurs, neighbourhood bhelpuriwalahs, and wedding cooks, it is always men who are most visible. These days you even have food historians, impresarios (!), writers, and TV show anchors. More often than not, they are men. You do, of course, have a couple of Tarla Dalals and Roopa Gulatis on the scene, but they are more an aberration than a norm. What's more, the connoisseur who judges "good" and "bad" food, endorses a great dish, and tells you the exact ratio of soji grains and avare kaalu for the "perfect" avarekaalu uppittu is always a man. Consider how men cluck their tongues and smile approv ingly at their wives in television advertisement.
But away from all the limelight, what's the scene like in the dim interiors of a middle-class home? Has the arrival of "perfect men" (ironically, ads feed us this image too!) and "women of substance" made the kitchen too a more equal world? Or, do husbands continue to read the sports page while wives serve them hot cups of coffee?
One has to admit that there is some perceptible change in urban, middle-class, double-income families. You do come across men who actually condescend to chop an onion or grate a coconut for breakfast. These are the ones who go by the tag "very understanding" in the marriage market and beyond. May their tribe increase. But is that all we have, well into the 21st Century, considering that equality in the domestic space was one of the earliest concerns of the feminist movement the world over? It is just as you are drawing conclusions about the female fate that you stumble upon men who actually do some serious cooking. They not only know how to set a cooker and light the gas stove (big strides in themselves!), but can also turn out decent meals. It's curious how these "deviants" occur...
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Sudhakar (50) started cooking because his arthritic wife can barely get off the bed on a chilly morning. Given the nature of Bangalore weather, that makes it about half the year. Now, he claims that he is the master of TamBrahm cuisine ("Ask my children if you want!") And in the circle of friends and relatives, it is Sudhakar who draws more "Tche, tche, paavam!" than his ailing wife.
Surya Prakash (32) learnt to put odds and ends together and turn out something edible when he was barely 10. His mother kept irregular shift hours at work. He grew up to be a gourmet of sorts, and he can make dosas thin as paper. This "methodless" cook can put together an assortment of things and turn out a nameless but critically acclaimed chicken dish. But the grind of never-ending kitchen chores bores him to death. So, you will seldom find him going through the boil-milk-make-coffee-a quickie breakfast routine. When his "expects too much" variety wife complains, he pleads that these things do not simply "occur to him", that he would do anything if she were to just "tell him" what to do, and rests his case with the suggestion that they employ a cook.
Shiva (28), who was "brought up on ghee and milk" (as the typical Kannada phrase goes) like all good sons are in this part of the world, was forced into an image makeover when he landed a software job in the US. His mother, hell bent on preserving his "pure" (!) vegetarian ways in the distant shores, filled his bag with every conceivable instant powder and taught him the simplest saaru recipe.
Shiva, of course, has not remained as pure as his mother would have wanted him to be. But he learnt, in course of time, to make a decent South Indian meal, ably aided by a range of MTR powders. Given the stress and uncertainty of his job and the constant yearning for home and its security, he came to discover even a "joy", a sense of being rooted, and therapeutic value in the aroma of asafoetida. But his mother, worried over his son's overexertion, has now found a "good match". Shiva no longer cooks as much as he used to. But he delights his wife with a great akki rotti breakfast every weekend, and the wife duly considers herself "very lucky".
Vishwas (25) has what he calls a "great academic curiosity" for cooking. He can go into raptures and hold an audience spellbound with his long narratives on the merits of broccoli or celery. So, he is constantly experimenting with foods of different nationalities. People around him did raise their eyebrows and call him a "freak" and even "feminine" when his romance with cooking began. But as he found himself a comfortable grove in the cosmopolitan space (as a designer), he turned something of a celebrity. "Vishy's cooking" is now a legend in his circles...
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Round them all up and you discover a range of men in this cyberage - "normal" (the time-tested variety who keep off the kitchen), "very understanding" (the coconut grating types), and "great" (the gourmets). Variety is the spice of life, no doubt. But one crucial common ingredient runs through the entire gamut - they continue to be privileged because they never have the psychological pressure to "perform" in the kitchen. They are being "plain men" when they don't do it and they are celebrated for their novelty, and "goodness of soul" when they do it. But you can bet on your mother's best recipe that the greatest of male cooks are not caught in the "thought cycle" of food, while the most liberated of women go to sleep thinking of the next morning's breakfast. Call it conditioning, a stubborn collective memory of mothers and grandmothers, we catch ourselves feeling guilty about heating up the previous day's palya from the fridge and feeling "grateful" for "helping husbands". You may be able to bend a ball like Beckham or wield a computer mouse with panache. But alu gobi and majjige huli are really stubborn. Exhaust every trick in the book and get them off your hands, and they go and stick in your mind.
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Metro Plus
Bangalore
Chennai
Delhi
Hyderabad
Kochi
Thiruvananthapuram
Visakhapatnam
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