I look for a vessel to make Maggi and find a flimsy wok. Did I always have this? I fish out a bright and cheerful ceramic bowl in which to put the Maggi. The bowl feels familiar yet distant, like a relic from another life that has suddenly reappeared in this life.
For two days after returning from a month-long stay with my parents in Coimbatore, I walked around in a daze, not being able to relate to my own house in Delhi. And somehow this dissonance manifested most strongly in the kitchen.
The shelves didn’t have rock salt or kootu perungayam like at my parents’ place. But there was jeera powder, garam masala, and dhania powder. The tiny but handy stainless steel canister, designed to hold a manageable quantity of cooking oil, wasn’t there. I looked with dismay at the grimy plastic container holding sesame oil.
As I used the tongs, I was momentarily disarmed by their firmness. Mine – fairly new, relatively unused – were unyielding, the two arms needed some effort to be prised apart. Mother’s moved smoothly, gripping vessels with ease. My mind took a few seconds to realise that this was a different pair of tongs. After all, I was in a different place.
This is my kitchen.
While pressure cookers, woks, ladles and glasses slowly brought me back to my life in Delhi, two vessels from a not-so-distant past, now in my kitchen again, put a smile on my face.
A stained wok from 2008, the accompaniment to early cooking experiments as a fresh grad with an apartment and a kitchen to call my (and my roommates’) own. Perhaps bought by my mother, brought to Singapore from Chennai. And a Prestige pot, bought for SGD 20 from Mustafa, a possession that gave me pride then for how cool it looked, and because cooking had suddenly become serious enough to warrant a purchase in Singapore for this kind of money for a vessel, of all things – not even a cooking appliance! Until that point, most ‘important’ vessels had been brought from India during visits.
These two vessels had come back with me to India in 2011 and left my parents’ until the stars finally aligned for me to bring them to my kitchen in Delhi. Both remind me of the kitchens of my early 20s – especially the two brightly-lit kitchens, one of which made me feel very fancy as it had shelves to hang wine glasses. I made tomato thokku in the wok, just liked I used to all those years ago.
Two other ‘new’ vessels have joined me. One, a stainless steel bowl that I got as second prize in a singing competition, all the way back in 1992. Amma had kept it unused all these years.
The other is a decorative plate that I’ve seen all through childhood, which belonged to my grandmother, and Amma says is a Chettinad design of some kind.
I don’t know what to do with both. The ‘prize’ bowl has a sticker saying ‘II prize’ that I don’t want getting washed off with use. The decorative plate is, well, decorative, and I wonder where it can be kept.
For a few years now I’ve seen vessels as quiet and insignificant milestones of life – “we got this during…” or “this person gave this vessel…” My mother has many vessels which she holds on to dearly because they were gifted by her relatives. I’m mildly surprised that I have begun my own such collection. And lent to others’. My best friend from college had my microwave rice cooker and tiny pressure cooker for years after I left Singapore. I brought back the tadka pan her mother gave us and it’s with my mother now.
I know vessels carry memories and tell profound stories, but I always associated those with ‘important’ vessels. Like a kodam or a coffee filter or a kalasa sombu. I’m ever so amused that humble and nondescript vessels like woks and tongs and tadka pans are also candidates.