Swish, flick and whip
Vasanth and I can notoriously never make up our minds.
Although we are terribly different in so many ways, some of our poorer qualities like this general indecisiveness makes it hard for us to sometimes be quick. Unless under duress, we postpone every serious point of decision making.
This especially seems to affect us when we do the mundane- ordering food or deciding on what to watch while eating our meals.
The whole day leading up to our anniversary, Vasanth and I spent nearly all of our time wondering what we should be doing to celebrate two years of being together.
It was a terrific, tumultuous and topsy turvy year. Much of what I might write here as a summary will be arbitrary, funny, happy, sad and hardly encompassing the whole truth. Hence, giving the details a miss. However, we knew we wanted to do something different.
“Should we go to Pulicat lake for a picnic?”
“A heritage walk, perhaps?”
“A trip to pondy?”
“What about a movie here at Satyam. Something. Anything”.
We decided on nothing.
Vasanth remarked that it was likely that we would end up visiting Velveteen Rabbit, the bar closest to our house, and meet every family member and friend willing to join us and call it a night. That doesn’t seem like a terrible plan but is it something we wanted?
As people committed to doing this ‘something different’ plan, we decided that December 4 would be an exclusive Vasanth-Sanjana classic mess around. (We don’t really have a classic mess around yet. This will be our first).
The eve of our anniversary though could be excused from all this pressure.
When Vasanth and I reconvened from work, we sat down on the couch and asked- now what? We turned to the tv, turned back to each other and decided to, as usual, watch a rom-com that we would both most definitely enjoy.
Although Vasanth has lived many years on earth, it was not until yesterday that he watched one of the greatest films of all time.
In the film, we can see the culmination of my favourite sub genre and topics- films about chefs with women in the lead, lots of food including the famous raspberry bavarian cream and most importantly, Meryl Streep.
As we started, I happily paused a few times to give backstories- Who is Julia Child? Which is her most complex and celebrated dish? What is Julie doing? Who are their husbands? Very quickly though, I stopped the interruptions as I lost myself in Paris and Queens.
Through Julie & Julia, we see the journey of two couples in two different timelines, looking forward to their journey of the future.
This absolute classic by Nora Ephron captures the sentiment of two women with semi-big personalities married to kind, loving and supportive men while they look to gain confidence in themselves by committing to an endeavor- the process of cooking and writing.
In the film, Julie, who really wanted to make it big, just didn’t stick around to finishing her book. She simply couldn’t, even though she tried. Julia, lost in Paris and bored at the thought of making hats, loved butter, bread, poultry and sauces at French restaurants so much so that she decided it was time to pick it up herself.
While they both looked to cooking as escapes initially, they wrote because it gave them “something to do”.
In a world where I often find myself struggling to detach my identity from my work which can often get tedious on many many days, I have come to realise that simple things like cooking and sometimes running can make all the difference.
When I get up, I realise that the only thing I’m most clear about is what I want to cook. Based on energy levels, I know that our meal for the day can range from a sambar, kootu, curry and appalam to a simple peanut butter sandwich.
On days of extreme determination and times when I just want to eat a truly great-tasting cookie, I sit down to make my own. Just flour, melted (not softened) butter, sugar, eggs, vanilla, a tiny bit of salt and chocolate will come together to form a glorious surprise in the mouth.
Cooking for the day and making it myself is a deep act of self care and quite possibly the only thing I indulge in, because as an adult, I feed myself exactly as I please. This would explain my exorbitant grocery bills (Sorry, Vas).
My mother and father, fantastic cooks themselves, really drilled this into our heads, I think. While I didn’t cook until I was 21, my sister Anusha has been in the kitchen since she was as young as 7 or 8. I have made up for all the lost time though in the last three years. With regular and rigorous cooking, I have mastered a small repertoire of dishes to ensure that they taste as good as they can be.
While I have made my own favourites including my sister’s recipe of the humble aglio e olio, my mother’s south Indian things, and my paatis sweets and bakshanam, I also have ventured into new territories. The process has included learning, unlearning and actively tweaking recipes from YouTube’s Madras Samayal, Natasha’s kitchen and several other regulars channels, to carve a niche for myself.
I have, with time, willingly made myself kothavarangai and beets even though I have detested them both as a child. I know now that adding peanut powder and chopped small onions with a smattering of garlic will make kothavarangai an absolutely killer vegetable. Beets need to be pureed and added to things. Not eaten necessarily as a whole. Chicken breasts need to be beaten down with a rolling pin. It will be squishy and weird to deal with but it is okay. Most importantly though, eggs are our friends and can be tossed everywhere to add serious value.
Vasanth, my diligent sous chef, has help to offer in any way he can- chopping if essential, tasting occasionally, heaping compliments like “Is this the best version of your banana bread yet?” and finally, cleaning up.
In cooking, I can change lifeless pulses into liquids that bind kozhambus, make a hangover pasta in 30 mins and can make plain and silly maida into a wonderful and glorious carrot cake with cream cheese frosting. Everything that was once nothing, becomes everything good about the world.
As we finish watching the last bits of Julie & Julia together, we see Julie at the Smithsonian and Julia at her house with a big massive book in her hands. There is only cheer and butter.
Vasanth and I break from each other’s arms, as we have done many many times in the past. He turns to me and says, “I really like how our anniversary is progressing”.
So today, we are going to do nothing much.
We just might swish, flick, whip, mix, pulse, fry, boil, soak and beat the mundane into submission, so that life automatically becomes different.
