Cooking by the Book

The frayed, oil-stained, food-encrusted pages of the book are testament to the first baby steps.

Rohini Singh's The Foolproof Cookbook: For Brides Bachelors & Those Who Hate Cooking is an old trusty companion, the proverbial bible for me and a million other novices. It is perhaps one of those rare books whose little red sticker which proclaims "over a million copies sold" is entirely believable. This was a gift from my mother when I left home for college. She told me to use it well and I did. The book taught me how to adjust the flame, boil, blanch, chop,  grind, garnish, steam, deep fry, pressure cook. It taught me 
more about the metric/imperial system than the math classes in school. It it has lined the bottom of my suitcases wherever I have travelled. It has occupied the prime position on my kitchen shelf. Always within reach. Always within sight.

My initiation rites into the kitchen were completed with  some minor tragedies, a few drops of blood, plenty of spillage and smoke, and one dog-eared, turmeric-stained page with the recipe for a punjabi chicken curry or Surkh Kukkad.
The book became a permanent fixture in the lovely little kitchen of our rather lavish rooftop college pad. We (me and my flat mates) never had enough utensils, we never had enough raw materials and we never had that much food. But we had the book. We had enthusiasm. We had hungry boys living in hostels who would always land up with a couple of headless birds and we would cook. Like old women in a community kitchen, we would gossip, chop onions, shed tears, share stories, smoke, drink, chat, and bond over the open pages of this book. We would dream about our futures balanced precariously on the rim of the gas cylinder, inhaling the aroma of the spices. We ate many birds over those three summers. 
The book would automatically flip open to that page made heavy by all the grease embedded into the paper. In those days the recipe was an adversary to be cajoled, forced and attacked till it yielded something that could be consumed and in those days we would pretty much consume anything. Every dish cooked was a battle won. Every food-stained page was my victorious pennant fluttering over the bones of the birds eaten, and a little tribute to the ghosts of the dead chickens. May they all rest in peace.