let the masala spread over

My kitchen has always been filled with knick - knacks all around, but I hardly worry about making amendments to it..

Afterall, it's a kitchen!!!!  

A 12 X 8 ft space of wall stands lone at the posh area of my house, holds a strong affinity deep within my heart!! This tiny little rodelent needs no introduction for its Grand Opening!!!

My mornings, never gets kicked off without a glimse of the opalescent decor it holds !!Embellished with bright and vibrant colored tiles, geometrical layout, gloss finished drawers and cutlery so unique, gives a feeling of gratification for everything I have laid my hands on... 

But is this the only thing my kitchen leaves me with!! Much, much and much more than I had expected !!!

Way beyond that exotic and lush ambience, lies the smell of those heavenly masalas spreading an intense aroma, adding taste and texture to my food,  feeding and filling many !!!!

However,things has never been the same as it seems now!!

There was a time when I my knowledge on foods and flavours needed to ripen..

This sense of incuriosity always  kept me at bay ( for a long time) from the doors of heaven on earth, until a new phase flipped over all my hopes and smeared my fingers roughly with the spices of nature...

This was when the masalas and it's dabba became my best half better than the already existing one!!!

 For sometime, even after my marriage, the dabba meant nothing more than an intangible thing to me, giving an appearance of a scared puppy sitting squezed at one corner of my kitchen...

 I hardly had the chance to discover anything out of it..may be my casual demeanor (in handling the kitchen chores) was the real perpetrator!!!

 In initial days of my marriage, trips to the kitchen was just for knowledge gathering and not sharing 😐...

I was modelled like a spectator,who was permissioned to watch the live telecast (all free) of a food channel 

(prepared and presented by my the in-laws), and was usually kept on a "MUTE" mode, without having a say in the comment section until the whole recipe is done and dusted for .... 

The scenario of the kitchen would remain the same each day, with Kadais and cookers tumbling over one another making it's way to the gas station,with cooking tools being pulled in a rush after rubbing against each other, with the noises of chit chat, whistles queuing one after another , with laddles hitting the kadai making it's presence felt with every bang they made, would often disturb the decorum of the house and of course me!!

But what bugged me the most was the masalas coming out of those small steel compartments, pressed between the fingers so tight, inevitably spilling all around the slab, floor and finally making it's way to the gas station and into the sabji 😏.

Afterall this and much more ,the mess looked simply unbearable and unmanageable to be swallowed..

Ahhhh... this wasn't me at all!!! 

Good lord!!! Am I at some kind of a launch party to a music video?? Certainly this is what I was avoiding for ages.... 

But as a still audience, I had nothing much of a choice (to act or to speak) than to pose like a dummy, which was almost  predefined before the show!!! Ever since my presence was felt in the kitchen ,I was selected for performing some uncountable tasks of cutting, chopping, plating and blah blah..  

With the guilt in my mind of being incapable to handle the heat, i finally 

 plunged into taking an action one day...  This was when I decided experimenting with the mastermind dabba and impromptu attempted making an easy peazy sabji on a trial basis..but just before I could understand how to go about, I got mixed up with the to and fro movements by my in-laws into the kitchen...and then what!!! nothing but a failed test and the dish came out to be a disaster!!!!

How would managing the inflow and outflow of the masalas in the the kitchen be possible,  if I couldn't  hardly manage making a simple sabji??? 😐😐

Certainly this is an innate talent for many but not for me, and it was way too hard to gallop this intruder who had already made an uninvited entry as hard as a rock... 

The magic box has changed my easy to go life into a more condensed one ... Hard to fall or to hold upright has now become a tough decision to make... 

  

I do remember when I was in my early twenties,  my mother used to stand in the kitchen every morning...with the very first thing she would do is to open the Dabba ever she had to prepare anything for us...the masalas thrown in the 🔥  sizzling oil would produce enough aroma to scent the whole house ,sometimes hard to inhale the fresh air after all that aerosols penetrated deep into our nostrils... 

The profound art that she had of using her hands so quickly by throwing masalas in and out was incredible.... Sometimes unknowingly it would lead to mixing of all the masala in the dabba so well that things would get unnoticed and differentiating them would become impossible 😀... perhaps she knew what she was doing and she loved it.

But the colours and flavours these spices would bring out in the food was beyond imagination,incomparible to the aforesaid words... 

Luckily, I had nothing much to do after all this, but to carry the feast for a relish....

But now after 13 long pressed years, undertaken the charge of a wife and as a mother,  the masalas and it's shelter ( the dabba) holds an entire supremacy in my house and my heart unconditionally...

From an immature to now making it a passion has enhanced my skills in a long run ... Atlast the rich flavours has reached me all my way and  "The dabba is a new me now"!!!

It leaves me with heartwarming  note that life without these tiny particles/granules has no crux whatsoever, for a flavourful and better living ..

I read these beautiful indentations or actually correlations which says "you are the butter to my bread" "you are the sugar to my candy " and so i decided to carry it forward by adding  ( for my masalas) " you are the heart to my body " " you are the breath to my soul "😄..

The love for them kept getting stronger and stronger in years, to an extent that life without their presence meant nothing... the wisdom of using them in whatsoever form was a devine feeling , so close to the nature that it leaves no room but an easy acceptance in everyone's kitchen... 

The Dabba has its beauty now, and it rests deep within me ..the exploration that would never finish and will drag me more closer to them in coming time!!! 

So this is me, and my Dabba signing off with a beautiful note :

"LET THE MASALA SPREAD OVER"