the cook

The Cook

When my children were young, we had a cook, a plump pleasant woman. She not only cooked the food, she carried a hot lunch to the school and made sure the children ate it. Since I work, it was a good arrangement.

One day there was a parent teacher meeting in school. I had to attend so I asked the cook to stay back until I returned from work. When I came home there was no cook, the house was open and the children were seated in front of the television looking like butter wouldn’t melt in their mouths.

“Where is the cook?”

They looked at each other.

“I don’t know.” They said together. Their eyes rolled side ways.

I could hear a distant banging from the locked store room.

I went and opened the door. The cook was there. Her face was red and her hair disheveled.

“These are not children. They are devils.” She banged my house key on the table.

“I am quitting.” She flounced off.

“What happened?” She was way down the road.

Apparently she shouted at the children in my absence and pinched my son. Furious, son and daughter together managed to overpower her and lock her in the store room.

It was a lost cause. I went to her house and pleaded. She refused to return to work.

We managed for some years with a “sous chef,” a lady who chopped and cut vegetables while I did the actual cooking. The children learnt to take sandwiches for lunch. This worked till my parents came to live with me.

They  needed three meals and two snacks  a day on time, I needed a reliable cook. I searched high and low until I finally employed an English speaking male chef from Andhra Pradesh. (I swiped him from a hotel). He cooked excellent food. He spoke good English. He solicitously stood behind my father a while he ate and served him the food.

“Is it tasty?” He would ask, “Some more?”

It was  a happy carefree  time. Dinners and guests were a breeze.

Gradually he took over the kitchen and I slowly lost control. It was a surreptitious battle with no open declaration of war.

“Today I cook fish.” He would say as I left for work. When I came back in the evening  I found chicken on the table.

I lost track of provisions and purchases.

It became a nightmare.

“For breakfast, I will make idly vadai.” When I finished my bath I was served puri potato.

My daughter came for a visit.

“What would you like?” asked the cook.

“Dosai and paneer,” said daughter.

“You eat masala dosai” said the cook.

She tried to plead with him, but he just walked back into the kitchen and pretended to be deaf.

The nightmare became worse.

Then I fell down and tore my Achilles tendon. It was nice to have regular hot meals with no effort, even though I never quite knew what would turn up on the table.

Then one day he came for work. I saw him in the kitchen and went for a bath. By the time I came out he was gone. No breakfast, lunch  or any food.
He turned up the next day as though nothing happened.

“Why did you not cook yesterday?”

“I decided that you need to learn to manage the work.”

I was furious.

“I can’t stand! I have crutches! Why am I paying you then?”

“If you ask questions like that I will quit.”

“Okay” I said. It was like a game of Russian roulette. I refused to cow down.

He left in a huff. We ate  from the canteen.

We are now back to square one. The gardener is my temporary sous chef.