Gone are the days when work was defined as per gender and strict parameters were set. If I being a female can take the car keys, drive amidst traffic without being abusive, login to my work station, pay my house bills why can’t my better half change the diaper, cook a meal once a day, do the laundry?
Is it too much to ask for? I don’t think so. It’s just the right expectation which couples have to set from day 1 they start their journey together. Things just fall into place.
Year 2002 –Arpan my Husband now and Boyfriend/Fiancée back then, moved to US for his PHD and I was pursuing my B-tech/Applied physics at Kolkata. Arpan was never exposed to cooking until then. Bong guy raised by Grand Ma /Mom and then moved to Hostel and then all of a sudden to a foreign land had to learn basis life skills to survive. Bongs in general I have seen are super foodies and no wonder hogs on Non-veg. Staying with south Indian friends in his initial bachelor days was definitely not easy when you have to survive mostly on Curd rice and Podi. In this situation, you are not left with any options but just learn cooking. And our Long distance romance- Kolkata to Florida was mostly on teaching him basic life skills which is cooking. It started with simple food like Daal Tadka, Begun bharta, Pulao, mixed vegetables, —but do you think this Bong girl who till that time never stepped out of her parent’s nest knew how to cook? The answer is “NO”. My recipe book was my Grand Ma. All those recipes shared with Arpan back in those days over Yahoo Chats, ISD phone calls were my Dida’s recipes which made Arpan quite a big chef which I realized once I reached US 2.5 yrs later.
Year 2003 Dec – Arpan in Mumbai to meet her Lady Love. I just joined Mumbai TCS in Jul 2003, staying with my roommates and learning to cook to satisfy my taste buds. The role was reversed and by then Arpan was a renowned cook in his bachelor circle and often gave me lessons over our daily phone calls. Arpan stayed in Mumbai for a week and one evening we planned to cook together. And yes that was the first time ever we were cooking for each other. Arpan chose Fried rice and I chose Palak Paneer to impress the other one. Not sure it was love or something else but those half cooked Fried rice and runny Palak Paneer cooked out of the most important ingredient “LOVE” tasted heavenly. And we both were assured that after marriage food will never be an issue, both of us can please each other with this newly acquired art of ours.
Year 2005- March- I was in California for my 1st onsite assignment and Arpan used to visit me every month from Florida. We purposefully used to book those hotels with cooking facilities, so that we can cook for each other. I used to go for early morning shifts and Arpan used to surprise me at lunch with his new learnt recipes every single time- Shrimp Okra, baked Salmon, roasted chicken.
Year 2006- Feb- we tied the knot and I moved to Pennsylvania and rented a house. No more room mates, no more fighting for space. A house of my own, my first house along the rail lines of Secane Station in Philadelphia. Arpan was still perusing his PHD hence he used to stay 15days with me at Phili and another 15 days at Boca Raton, Florida for his research work. Those 15days of his stay used to be our Food holidays…Whatever Arpan learnt from his Canadian roommate, French senior or Iranian class mate used to be on our dinner table. Rarely did he cooked anything Bengali or Indian- it used to be variety every single day like Fried Calamari, Oysters in white wine sauce, Grilled Lamb, Ghormeh Sabji, Beef steak and the list goes on and on. After work cooking used be our stress busters. It was like both of us competing for master chef competition but slowly with baby steps we unknowingly became passionate cooks, trying various recipes at home. Then those weekend potluck or any friend coming for dinner it was like who will cook what, and trust me, we never repeated any recipe for the same set of guests.
Yes food and love for food made Arpan an expert in most of the foreign dishes- anything to do with grill, bake, steam, roast- he is always ready to take the lead. Only for bong food he looks forward to my cooking. The load got well distributed over the years and I can happily say we equally share our Kitchen. I did a good job of a taster and food critic I guess, 15 years of our marriage and yes every day dinner delicacies are from Arpan …. Mostly my logoff time is late, so dinner is Arpan’s job and he does it with love especially those Thai curries, cream of mushroom, tomato basil oat soups to name a few.
Once upon a time he used to cook to impress his lady love but now for his little love- Megh. Megh will go gaga for daddy’s white sauce pasta. I still remember first time when Arpan made Alfredo sauce from raw eggs- newly learnt recipe from his half Italian friend…he sacrificed few dozen of eggs but was still not able to get to the perfection. What the heck, we now use the easy recipe of white sauce by Sanjeev Kapoor.
Biryani has always been disloyal to Arpan, that’s his biggest sorrow. Every single time it’s a disaster. But I fall in love over and over again for his Grilled pork, Greek lamb, Mutton stew, Beef Kebabs. But one little thing I must share about his cooking, whenever he enter the kitchen for some special dish, I can bet on this, every single time I will get a surprise and every time those are not happy surprises. I always tell him that he can never replicate his own dishes, every time its different one because he doesn’t believe in you tube recipes, or noting down his own recipes, he believes in his intuition which sometimes go haywire.
Arpan’s greatest cooking wish/dream is to open a roof top restaurant which will not have any menu card. Whatever he wishes to cook on that particular day, which will be of course some fusion dish , will be served to the customers who wants to risk their appetite for his dishes… keeping fingers crossed, I am waiting for that dream restaurant too.