“If Yan can cook”, he used to say, ’so can you.”

I took that seriously. I even tried the no-look coriander chopping trick that he used to perform to much applause. All I got was a bloody (painful) pinkie and a swift bottom-paddling. It was a pity meat was never allowed at home, for I was pretty darned sure I could cook the finest Mongolian Hot Pot in all of northern Chennai. By the tender age of twelve I could distinguish a cucumber from a courgette, an orange from a kumquat and a de-glaze from a demi-glace. I even baked a magnificent upside-down chocolate marble cake (it wasn’t meant to be ‘upside-down’ – the blasted tray slipped) with half a bottle of my Dad’s finest sherry.

My grand-uncle once spent two hours trying to get me to apply to Culinary School (“that’s where the money is. Oh, and your wife will be a lucky woman. Nudgenudgewinkwink.”). For my thirteenth birthday, the kind Mrs. Choudhary gave me a book called ‘The Ultimate Guide to Cooking, Baking and Grilling’; I still have it around here somewhere. Very soon, in addition to Yan Can Cook!, I was watching cooking shows starring a French guy called Pierre, a balding British chap called Floyd and a strange lady from nowhere called Madhur Jaffrey. I even took notes. I was barely into my teens and I was already a middle-aged woman.

 All this came to a screeching halt, of course, when I landed up at Stephen’s. I used to make Maggi occasionally, but that takes as much skill as removing lint from your belly-button. For six years (with the exception of brief holidays spent at home) I didn’t think about cooking.

And then this happened.

Every Monday evening, I find myself watching Nigella Express with the gusto of a hormonal teenager chancing upon his first episode of Baywatch. It’s not just that the lady is phenomenally good looking and that she refuses to dress in the vapid white overalls that make artists look unsuccessfully like scientists. (They stain easily too!) It’s her approach to cooking that is so refreshing. It can be easy, fun, quick and yet, magically, very stylish. Her desserts (which are what I rate chefs on) are fabulous. And she doesn’t skimp on the butter (or chocolate sauce, olive oil, parmesan, marshmallows, bourbon biscuits, m&ms). Mmmm.

In college, I saw a BBC Documentary called “In Search of Perfection: Heston Blumenthal”. This Heston chap is part of the elite group of fancy-schmancy chefs who call themselves Molecular Gastronomists. Forget what I just said about the buxom Ms. Lawson above, this really is magic. If only I had known about this while I was grappling with Solid State Physics problems in Delhi.

Blumenthal’s 3 (Michelin) starred restaurant in England is called The Fat Duck. Their £125 tasting menu has long been considered the finest, most plebian-friendly introduction to the science to-date. The key, apparently, is to focus not so much on taste or smell, but on the memories associated with food. Hence the Nitro-scrambled bacon and eggs ice-cream with sour tomato and red pepper ‘jam’ and caramelized French Toast. And then, there’s the Hot & Cold Tea – a Willy Wonka creation with two fluid gels that don’t coalesce immediately.

Which brings me to this morning: I burnt my toast, put too much sugar in my coffee and spilt some orange juice into a just-boiled pot of milk.

Maybe I should just stick to selling unsellable hotel rooms!

Do not put statements in the negative form.
And don’t start sentences with a conjunction.
If you reread your work, you will find on rereading that a
great deal of repetition can be avoided by rereading and editing.
Never use a long word when a diminutive one will do.
Unqualified superlatives are the worst of all.
De-accession euphemisms.
If any word is improper at the end of a sentence, a linking verb is.
Avoid trendy locutions that sound flaky.
Last, but not least, avoid clichés like the plague.
~William Safire, “Great Rules of Writing”
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Whoever said ‘writing sets you free’ was a prize ass. There is, to me, nothing more arduous or mind-bendingly frustrating than sitting down in front of my laptop and attempting to churn out a simple piece of prose. I cannot simply hammer away at my keyboard or scribble on a sheet of A4, and emerge half an hour later freer, lighter, calmer. Nor am I capable of throwing down sentence upon sentence, abandoning form, flow and finish for a little skinny-dipping in the stream of consciousness.

It is, as far as I am concerned, bloody hard work. It is painfully slow, very tiring, and therefore, no fun at all. You celebrate the little victories, of course: the little turn of phrase that came out just right, the perfect metaphor that you’re sure you invented, the use of the appropriate punctuation mark, even. But until it is complete, and you are satisfied with the end product (or discard it outright), there is a gnawing vacuum, like a blocked ear that will not pop.

For long, I thought this was because my writing was not honest. I don’t write for myself, it’s always for The Reader. And very often, there is an involuntary attempt to give The Reader what he wants, to make him smile, frown, react. This playing to the gallery does not attempt to reproduce your inner self. It is showmanship, mere entertainment, and you are no more than a literary Humphrey Boggart.

But what does honesty have to do with anything? What is wrong with a little paperback promiscuity? And so what if it is hard work? The purpose, as far as I am concerned, is for it to be effortless, for what is written to seem like nothing more than a happy accident. And that, if you can remember the first time you clambered upon a bicycle, is not easy.

There is no point to this post. I was attempting to do precisely what I said I was incapable of. I was also trying to see if my powers of concentration were as rotten as I thought they were.

On both counts, I was right.