Friday, December 2, 2011

Compliment

Around about 21:00 on a workday evening in an apartment shared by three bachelors, it's a very typical scenario. The three individual rooms are occupied by three separate individuals hunched over their laptops pretending to be busy with something extremely important but very likely only passing snide comments an appropriately snide comment worthy photo posted on Facebook by a friend on the other side of the world. It's been close to 4 hours since they got back from the daily grind.
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But their attention is not fully on the screen in front of them. Rather it is on the large central space in the apartment aside from the three rooms. They notice that a very important portion of that large central space looks particularly unattended to and empty. It's called the kitchen and as the night rolls on, the possibility of another Doritos, milk and bananas combo for dinner grows ever strong unless someone acts up.
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There is always that hope. That a hero will answer the need of the hour. Dice the onions crying tears of hardship, toss the oil into the pan with grim determination, put together the spices as his arsenal to salvation, pop open the fridge for veggies or meat as the case may be to save the day. And there is also that fervent hope that that hero won't be him.
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Eventually one of them summons up the courage, feels the necessity of breaking through the tasteless tyranny of ready-to-eat food or fruits-for-dinner. Too much salt, too much oil, too much red chilly powder are all crimes easily overlooked for someone who signs up for THE JOB for the evening.
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No matter what gooey, sticky, burnt end results of the experiments atop a gas cooker may be, the only sentence being said during and after dinner is a constant re-affirmation of the effort put in by that one volunteer, the culinary soldier. "Khanaa bahut badiyaa banaa hai! Khanaa bahut badiyaa banaa hai!" [The food is really good! The food is really good!] Buried not so deep beneath that heartfelt praise is the desperate wish that come the next night, the reluctant chef concerned would be all pepped up and look forward to receiving that compliment again.
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[http://virtual-inksanity.blogspot.com/2011/12/compliment.html]