Recipes, spaces, writers...n me drownin....

Some things don't change. When I left Madras, I left behind my grandmother's home made food. Nobody can even get close to her style of preparing food. Call it the magic of the hand or the person I say that into every creation, she whipped in her love- her soul. My mom is no exception in that case. Each dish my mom makes she does with a lot of care. I know that I don't compliment her on it too much. Nevertheless she never fails to ask me what I think about the food.

After coming to Singapore my mom always tries to cook something special, so that I don't miss out and feel homesick for Chennai. It's her effort and love that converts each ordinary dish into an exotic one. That's something every woman does. In the earlier days woman used food as a medium to convey what and how they felt at that time.

Even in this book named Like Water for chocolate by Laura Esquivel each dish contains an emotion. Tita, the female protagonist, possesses the gift of preparing exquisite food. But fate doesn't treat her fairly. Tradition expects her to remain single and look after her mother till the end, while Pedro the guy she liked gets married to her sister. One thing I adored in the book was how each process of cooking food was given such tender loving care that it didn't seem a strenuous activity. Every chapter made pleasurable reading. The book did not state what a good woman did, but instead showed how women used food to reflect what they felt.

There were some instances in the book where the author made use of techniques like Magic realism to portray simple yet complex human emotions. When Pedro is getting married to Tita's sister, Tita is very sad. For the marriage she even ends up cooking the food.

It is said that you should never let emotions interfere in the work you do. Let personal matters be personal and private is private. But for Tita the irony is that the PERSONAL BECOMES PRIVATE! For Tita both her lives are entwined- that of a dutiful daughter and of a sister. Multiple relationships get foreshadowed in understanding what each relationship is all about.

The sadness felt by Tita and the tears she sheds while preparing each dish makes everyone who consumed it sick in the stomach. At the same time when Tita makes the cake for her niece, she is so happy that the cake turns out to be a spectacular success. Everyone gets infected with the happiness and love poured into making it. Food I personally feels reflects the state of mind of the person. Laura Esquivel was quite successful in showing how deeply a person's emotions can influence the food they make. The food mirrors a person's feelings and tells us a story. It's just that we are never very conscious while we consume it. If only we had the capability, we could have realized the intensity of emotions that get mixed into a simple gravy dish of potato.

I do not cook a great deal. I never felt the need to as I always had my grandma or mother around. If I prepared something it would either be pasta, scrambled eggs or omelette at the most. I haven't experimented that much with my skills and know that I can never cook as well as my grandma, aunt or mom. They all have the knack for it. Whenever my grandma cooks she hates it when I loiter around the kitchen. If I commented on the smell of chocolate fudge, she would scold me instantly saying not to say anything until the food was done. Call it what you wish- belief or mere superstition. I just think my grandma wanted to prepare top class nutty chocolate fudge for my family to munch and enjoy.

In one of the recent novels I read how the female protagonist just liked reading recipes as she could devour them without dirtying a dish. What struck me was the thought and how women expressed their feelings. There is a difference in the way men and women view not only the world but the spaces they inhabit. Now in the modern arena, I see plenty of women coming out of the public space and making it to top positions.

Even writers aren't very scared to reveal their weaknesses and strengths. When a man writes a book, he writes in relation to women or worldly affairs. But notice that when a woman writes she reveals something which is close to her heart. Great writers like Jane Austen, George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Shashi Despandhe or even Anita Desai, utilized the private space they inhabited to write great classics about relationships and women's space in society. Even a recent writer like Laura Esquivel made kitchen the space to tackle issues which did not concern food.

A great writer to me is one who can flesh fiction out of their experiences in a confined space. You needn't travel too far to find a story. It might be just right in front of you. Success lies in recognizing the potential of the subject and making use of the medium to shape it to artistic perfection.

Ok I think I have jabbered on as usual. Though recipes were my beginning para, the book of Laura Esquivel and women writers using space differently formed the second half of my thought process. The rest of what I wrote is based on intermingling of my personal thoughts and experiences. Just like we have read biographies of people we should make a biography on people based on the food they cook. I am sure there will be tons of lives to read and make interpretations of. For who knows what mysteries we may unravel while we travel through the stomach for a change.