Cooking, Corporate Confabulation

By Kalpana Kumar

I love cooking and I have enjoyed my career too.

Unlike Sports or Arts, in a Corporate, one doesn’t have to be the best professional to succeed in making a living, just like in a kitchen, one doesn’t have to be the best Chef to cook a meal. Corporate and Kitchen absorb excellence but will also tolerate mediocrity.

I believe my Corporate success had a lot to do with the time I spent not in college but in the kitchen.

At work, being a Human resources professional, it was all about getting a group of people, managing the dynamics to create winning teams. Of course everyone, however competent, has their “off” days.

For me, involvement in cooking was inversely proportional to involvement in my career. Before my retirement this April, my involvement in the kitchen was restricted to menu planning.

I faced my first challenge in cooking soon after I got married. My family of orientation was a large nuclear family with a continuous stream of guests.We had a full time cook and hence rarely got a chance to enter the kitchen except to steal a teaspoon of bournvita. Just so we learn the basics of cooking, my father would declare one of us to be the chef of the day. I used to enjoy those days.

When I got married and moved into a new city there wasn’t a single member of my family in that city who could have sent me a meal box in an emergency! Swiggy’s owner wasn’t even born then. It dawned on me that if I didn't cook meal after meal, we would starve.

I was a working woman and had to catch a bus and travel an hour to get to the office. The focus was very much on finishing and that called for efficiency more than taste. The most inflexible appliance in the kitchen is the pressure cooker. Unlike some vegetables that can be cooked on super high flame and continuous stirring to persuade it to cook without turning black,with the pressure cooker you surrender the ingredient to it. If you increase the heat, it will either burn the bottom or the shapely toor dal will proudly display its individuality when you open it. Being a South Indian, it is extremely important to have the toor dal cooked well. Pressure cooker was more or less the Boss dictating the minimum time you spend in the kitchen.By the time I put everything in the fridge and headed for the shower to scrub out the smell of turmeric, I would feel my day was over.

This focus of efficiency and time management helped me at the workplace since as a new recruit, I could get away by just being efficient. I wanted my bosses to feel that I am a reliable employee and given a responsibility, they could rest easy that I would get it done - much like the statement I used to make to my husband that don’t complain as long as the food is on the table. Of course, at home the boss/ subordinate angle is a bit blurry.

Once the expectations and pressure started to increase at the workplace involvement in cooking became inversely proportional to involvement in my career. I delegated cooking to a nice lady looking for employment and restricted my involvement to menu planning. She taught me a lot about managing people and getting the best out of them.

However, the more involved I became at Office, the less confident I became about my cooking. Once in a way I would don the chef hat with the intention of setting some standards for the maid with disastrous results. My confidence was so low that once when a son-in-law joined our family and said “ I believe you are a fantastic cook and make the best egg curry in the world” , I became an ova phobic and haven’t cooked egg curry since then.

This respect for reputation helped me at the workplace, where being more hands on, I was able to and willing to get my hands dirty if the need arose.

As a professional, though I enjoyed my career,I was looking forward to my retirement and claiming leadership over my kitchen!

Little did I realise that it was like changing your job and one needs to spend that ”induction” time to settle down well.

However, I plunged head on. Within 15 days of my retirement we were celebrating Tamil New year’s day. Food is an important part of this function where one was expected to use certain vegetables - Raw banana, Sweet potato, Red pumpkin, White pumpkin and a sweet dish and doughnut like Vada.

Normally one would choose one or two vegetables and make a meal with it. I decided to use all of them that day! Raw banana dry subzi, Sweet potato dry subzi, Red pumpkin gravy, white pumpkin semi gravy, Sweet rice dish and of course the vada.

With a flair I laid the table, I found each dish wanting to stand out in its own way. The tamarind in the Red pumpkin gravy, the stubborn uncooked raw banana, the bland white pumpkin, the sweet rice crying for more jaggery and the doughnut threatening to fall off the table and break into fragments!

The next day all the warring dishes went into ericha kari - a recipe designed to salvage flops into something quite tasty. I was reminded of the times when I had to deal with stubborn , unreasonable employees and the pleasure I got from putting them through the performance appraisal process. Ericha kari represented that for me!

For the next function, I decided to make one dish perfectly. I decided on an easy recipe for Wheat halwa. I started with caramelising the sugar, just as the recipe had suggested and then proceeded to cook one cup wheat flour in five cups of water and it was thickening just as it was supposed to. Then came the point where I had to add the caramelised sugar. I proceeded to do just that but to my dismay, it refused to flow and had solidified. I turned off the gas and the you tube channel and proceeded to liquify the caramel. I tried a fork to break it but it got stuck. Same fate was met by the butter knife. I put the pan with the Butter knife and fork on the gas and poured hot water and started to stir as much as the knife and fork allowed me to. It was a comic sight. Finally the caramel relented and the dish was made and consumed.

Generally I love cooking but there are days I feel ( once upon a time ) I loved cooking. Just like during your professional life , there are some days when you wake up wishing it was a sunday

By Kalpana Kumar