Oh s**t! Aaah! D****t! Not again!

…and many more such colourful and spirited expressions were and are commonplace in our home whenever I’m cooking stuff up in the kitchen.

Much to the chagrin of my mother and irritation of my father, I entered the kitchen at a relatively young age. The first ever thing I made (under Mom’s keen supervision with everything from chillies and onions cut beforehand and poha soaked in water), primarily owing to my own deep love for it, was poha. It turned out well, but I won’t go as far as taking credit for it since my hands were merely well-guided blunt tools.

Since then, with lots of trials and errors I learned my way through it all. I learned to use the tongs, make round chapattis, slightly questionable but totally edible tea, roast papads and also whip up basic vegetables, soups and curries (mostly fancy ones like paneer butter masala). Pizzas were gaining popularity then, and I trying my hand at them too.

My experiments made me proud, but the one unwelcome thing that always kept me close company was burn marks, not one but many of them. Almost every time I made a tadka, oil spluttered on my hands. While filtering, I somehow managed to spill hot tea on myself. Hot pans and frying pans seemed to have a special liking for me because they gave me love bites quite often.

You can laugh if you want. Wonder what kind of a joke was being played on me! Within ten minutes of each other, my arm touched a hot pan twice and made this V pattern, much like giving me a temporary tattoo or something. What does the silly me do after that? Without caring to attend to it first, I reached for my phone and took a picture of it. Haha!

One might expect that with years of cooking experience behind me I would qualify to be in the ‘seasoned’ category by now. I do too. If only it didn’t include not burning up myself or the place as a relevant criteria.

This post has been written on the prompt Burn for The Daily Post