Friday, June 25, 2010

in 2 minutes

i woke up. it was dark. i was tired and hungry. u know the kind of tired, when you sleep at the wrong times, and open your eyes to see darkness everywhere, and realise that it is past dinnertime. and hungry, as, oh well as hungry u can be when it is past dinnertime. as i pulled my body straight up, i realised i will have to cook. i will have to peel, cut, wash, stir, mix, pour, wash some more. by then my appetite would go for another round of sleep. the best, easiest and tastiest fix was maggi. good old maggi. just two minutes.

feeling extremely proud of my culinary judgements, i broke the solid slab of noodles into two...aah, how like the advertisements. but wait, how much water should i put. a cup? whose cup? never mind. i just put enough for all the singular threads to have a nice, long swim. then the tastemaker. in the meantime the roomie comes and advises that the tastemaker goes before the water. what the hell? its all going in the same place..."sab moh maya hai". i advance unperturbed.

as the water boiled, i had another idea..why not make this a healthy maggi ( as if!!!)? out came the veggies. and with surgeon like preciseness i made equally sized, absolutely unbiased pieces of them all. my two minute dream was long shattered. the water still boiled.

as the oil shrieked (there goes my healthy), and the veggies screamed, i realised i had no chillies. now, being a bengali has several advantages, very few disadvantages. one of them is reluctance to bland food. chilli-less food is unimaginable, unthinkable, unpalatable. so out they came from an ungodly corner in the refrigerator. and forgetting all preciseness, i chopped it. inhumanly. without thought or mercy, the sharp edge of the sparkling knife came down on them with unmistaken aim. every time. except once. when, having an evil mind of its own, it decided to land on my finger. left hand. grimace. facial contours changed as i kept the agonized hell burning heaven freezing pain unexpressed. the water still boiled.

i dropped the chopped chillies in the heated pan. and grabbed it to give it a good shake. one needs to show who is the boss. uh oh.... was it hot? i guess so....as i dont have any more sensation left in the small scalded portion of my fingers, i cannot trully describe the degree of heat. right hand. the water boiled still.

with parts of both my hands sacrificed, i sat glum waiting for the maggi to be finally done. and then i realised. 2 minutes? it was past twenty. why was the maggi taking so long? oh dear friends, it was maggi no longer! it was a mashed, white, unseparable mix of gooyey noodles. :(

with motherly love nevertheless, making as much use of my hands as i mortally could, i mixed the two. the maggi and the veggi, overboiled and overburnt. by now, my appetite, judging the situation and realising nothing good could happen here, had taken its hunger elsewhere. but adamant and stubborn i am. i will eat my over cooked maggi, i did.

so what if maggi is now off the charts for the next six months?

6 comments:

Joy Forever said...

When I started cooking almost five years ago, I soon realized something: you either have healthy food, or you have Maggi. The purpose of cooking healthy food is to exercise. The purpose of cooking Maggi is to promote laziness. So "healthy Maggi" is a kind of oxymoron that goes totally against the ethics of cooking by wasting a perfectly good packet of Maggi that would have fed you in 2 mins if cooked in the proper unhealthy manner. I hope you learn from your mistakes.

Sumana said...

i have. no more healthy maggi. if it was supposed to be healthy-ly eaten, the makers would have come up with another tagline, and not, "bas do minute".

Kuntala said...

Sumana, tumi dekhchhi amar thekeo kharap :)......ar ami Sugata r sathe completely ekmot. muulo-r jibhe jol aana preparation jemon hoyna, temni Maggi ke swasthyokor banate geleo probhuuto golojoger sombhabona. By the way, angul tar ki abostha? ghoralo naki?

Sumana said...

Kuntala di, angul thik i ache, kintu amar ranna-r obostha kharap. koto experiment je cholche, broccoli-r shaad o ja, poneer er shaad o tai :-(

Joy Forever said...

Kuntala, muulo kintu amar bhaloi laage.
Sumana, ar ki chai? Sob kichhu ke same swaad e ene felechhis, ebar oi same swad ta jate mangser moton laage seta ensure kor. Tahole jaai raandhbi mangser swad pabi.

Kuntala said...

hahahahahaha, asadharoN tip Sugata. rannar swad-eo dharabahikota bojay rakha chattikhani kotha noy. apnar sathe muulo, kukurpriiti anek kichhui mele na amar. podobii ar choshma tai ja milechhe.

are Sumana, broccoli ar paneer ekirokom khete hochchhe bole dukkho korona. ei tumi i ekdin Droupodii-r moto ranna korbe, dekhe niyo.