Cooking

Cooking is an activity which bonds people on one hand and on the other hand break up families. What is it about cooking that makes people draw territorial lines and fight till the bitter end? It also makes a couple more intimate, you understand stuff about the other person, which otherwise would have been a mystery.
Kitchen is such a soothing and comforting haven and for some a battlefield fraught with danger and deciet. Blessed are the few whose authority in the kitchen is unchallenged though their cooking skills are suspect. Cooking for someone is an act of love, the way one expresses love, affection and concern for the other/family. But, it is also a way to show everyone else that this is my territory and you cannot intrude.
One's lifestyle also plays a important role in deciding how the cooking will be done, the gadgets in the kitchen and the number of people involved in it. People are famous for the mind games they play in the kitchen. Many a young housewife has learnt that cooking has more to it than what meets the eye.
The act in itself is not difficult to master. Cooking involves a few set of basic rules and can be improvised along the way. One needs to practise to be good at it. And with the number of cookbooks flying of the shelves one need not look very far for recipes or the 'authentic' styles of cooking.

A Puranic Story

I would like to start my blogging with this amazing story taken from Shashi Tharoor's book, "Bookless in Baghdad", which is a collection of his thoughts and speeches.
A Sage asks his disciples, "When does the night end?"
And the disciples say, 'At dawn, of course.'
Sage: 'I know that. But when does the night end and the dawn begin?'
First Disciple who is from the tropical south, replies, 'When the first glimmer of light across the sky reveals the palm fronds on the coconut trees swaying in the breeze, that is when the night ends and the dawn begins.'
Sage: No.
Second Disciple, who is from the cold north, ventures, 'When the first streaks of sunshine make the snow and ice gleam white on the mountaintops, that is when the night ends and the dawn begins.'
Sage: No, my sons. When two travellers from opposite ends of our lands meet and embrace each other as brothers, and when they realize they sleep under the same sky, see the same stars and dream the same dreams ---- that is when the night ends and the dawn begins.'