There are three women that I have met in this little lifetime, who have made me gasp and stare at them in awe.
Mom, who I call Maa.
Grandmom, who I call Dida.
And Mum-in-law, who I call Amma.
All women worth their weight in gold.
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Why? Well, because among their countless other gifts, they take minutes to cook up meals that look like they have been slow cooked for hours. While I am the kind that sits and plans and then shops and then cooks, in their kitchens, stuff materializes out of thin air and delicacies get made within minutes.
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Ask mum what to do with a certain vegetable and she says – Oh, you can do this…and you can also do that…and of course, you can do that too. In short, she leaves you with so many options that by the end of the conversation, you have no room in your mind for the list of ingredients you were looking for. How does she hold it all in her head? I don’t know and I am hoping that ‘experience’ is a fairly right answer.
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Dida is at another level. She will never entirely reveal the recipe to you, and even if she does, it will NOT turn out the way it turns out in her able hands. And I gripe and scowl and I still don’t get it like she does. All this while, I felt she had some secret ingredient. Until of course, I saw Kung Fu Panda, and that myth got busted. She agreed vehemently and said that I could look all I like but I would never find anything secret in her kitchen because…there IS NO SECRET. Ugh.
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And Amma. Her funda is easy, simple cooking. Don’t sweat it in the kitchen, she keep insisting. And then she produces all that awesomeness that her son adores entirely and I am stumped because frankly, I like her cooking way better than mine. I also attribute it to the fact that food does taste better when somebody makes it for you. Amma is a champion…she takes a few minutes and limited ingredients to make such awesome stuff that I can hope to master it all only when I am a grandmum.
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Here is to mothers who feed hearts and souls and keep at it for lifetimes. They don’t just feed us food but a feeling of being loved and taken care of. Completely. Let us love them back. Atleast today.