Life- A Story that we Choose to Live!
Stuffed Karela (Bitter Gourd) is one veggie that I used to struggle to make (till yesterday). In fact, I always avoided making any kind of Karela- be it stuffed or sauteed. This veggie was always taken care of by my mother-in-law (MIL) aka Aai.
A few times, I did ask her the recipe but didn’t have the courage to go ahead and prepare it. A couple of times, I did ask my sister-in-law her recipe, but again didn’t have the nerve to make it myself.
Yesterday was one such day. The dinner menu was stuffed karela.
The moment I saw it outside the fridge while having tea, I had jitters. “Oh god! Karela, that too in the evening? It’s so time-consuming. I will have to ask Aai for every small thing in the recipe. I’ll waste so much time. I can’t prepare this one. I’ll ask Aai only to take charge and prepare it. But she’s already feeling worked up. How can I tell her to do it?!” — This was my self-talk.
Be positive, feel positive- This is heard so much lately that I was actually determined to plunge into it today. But still, there was something unresourceful happening in my mind about it.
I just took a break from the entire scene and started thinking about where did this “I can’t prepare it” come from. 12 years into marriage and learning to cook with my heart and soul, I am a pro at this now. Then why was only this Stuffed Karela giving me jitters even after 12 years?
Rewind 12 years back-
When I had just got married, I was naïve to cooking completely. It was only after I got married that I got into full-fledged cooking. It took time but I was ready to plunge into it.
Our laundry man (R), comes home to collect clothes for ironing and his mother (A), had been our house help years back when Aai was working. Later A stopped working because of health issues. But we still had that connection because R used to collect clothes for ironing.
A’s stuffed karela recipe was quite famous in our house. Whenever she prepared it, we used to get a tiffin from her invariably. And while relishing the veggie, there used to be an invariable dialogue in the house, “Mmmm…No one can prepare Stuffed Karela the way A does… It’s just yummmm”.
That’s it! And hence, I started believing that I am naïve to cooking and cannot try my hands on this difficult recipe! And hence, I never tried my hands at it! And hence, I started believing that I was inefficient in preparing this one. And hence, I cannot prepare it as tasty as what A makes!
Realizing all this in the so-called break time, I was now hell-bent on preparing Stuffed Karela.
I took charge of the kitchen, asked Aai to not interfere. I remembered Aai recipe, my sister-in-law’s recipe, and A’s recipe. I literally modelled all three of them while making this one.
Combined the three recipes and made my version of it!
And the compliments that came in for this one… Woah… Trust me, I felt as if I had passed my board exams with flying colours!
Life is a story that we choose to live. For years I chose to believe that I cannot do something as easy. And this created my identity- ‘I cannot do this; I’m inefficient at this’. But if you pay attention to your unresourceful states, to the identities that you have created for yourself, and where they came from, you will CHOOSE to live different, invariably!
