What's Cooking! (Part I)

Author's note: Written on 11.02.2008, Suzhou, China. And though I had intentions of scribbling a sequel, it never materialised! Sigh!

It was something between a Ugghhh and a Yikes! that escaped my mouth as I sprang back in a moment of horror. The door of the fridge shrugged in a "What else did you expect!" sort of way. Inside, in the vegetable compartment was the ghastly scene of half a kilo of beans wilting cadaverously, enveloped by mounds of fungi that had emerged in colonies for the requiem. The poor lot of beans had camped there for a month and presently looked like eerily entwined fingers urging to claw at me for bringing them to this ruinous condition in sub zero temperatures. The only bearable aspect here was the string of thread, still holding the beans together, apparently oblivious to their state of affairs.


My attention quickly went to the onions (the actual reason that I had opened the refrigerator). The pair that had been a rich purple when I bought them last weekend (or was it the weekend before) had paled a few shades. They still looked healthy save the small sprouts that had started to germinate at the ends.

Ewww!. I retreated again, wondering how to extract the bean carnage out of the fridge. The onions were first rescued. Deciding to enshroud the beans before disposing them, I pulled out a plastic cover from their territory under the kitchen sink. With ginger adroitness, I held the innocuous string between fingertips and lifted the weight, intending to shove it into the cover in the other hand. The task seemed to demand surgical precision. If one stalk of bean cut loose, the whole lot would fall in an exodus onto the floor. In linguistic terms, it would mean spilling the beans! The cover on the other hand was adamantly repulsive to the entire ploy. It refused to consume the decomposed vegetables and constantly turned away.

Not wanting to aggravate the situation, I heaved the bare stack into the dustbin. They landed with a rebellious thud. The dustbin trembled with a second soft thud when a tomato still in its cover had to leave the precincts of the fridge with no particular inspection. After all, it had arrived from the market with the beans and was not expected to be in acceptable state of freshness now! The beans seemed to be twitching and hissing for revenge. I pulled the obstinate plastic cover on them, concealing them from my view forever.

The vegetable compartment was almost emptied, spare a couple of carrots that had started to develop what looked like fissures, a faction of small tomatoes appearing partially shriveled and a green chilli, proud as a green chilli could be, refusing to divulge its actual state of being.

I turned to look at the contents on the small shelves in the fridge door. They simply looked away. A container of condensed milk tilted itself into position enabling me to read the expiry date. It had miraculously survived the latest onslaught of procrastination.

With a deep sigh, I shut the door of the fridge close, recalling my kitchen capers from the past.