DAY 133

My mother is a wonderful cook. I am a fairly good cook too.
But unlike my mother I do not believe in the connection between the heart and the stomach. I am not passionate about finding a way to people's hearts through their stomachs.

There is a great difference between my mother's cooking and mine. I do cook tasty dishes. But it ends there. However, when my mother churns out tasty dishes, it lingers.
There's always that extra something, that leaves people wanting more or thinking about more, or feeling the connection between the heart and the stomach.And they invariably end up praising my mother's culinary skills for its uniqueness.

And my mother would scratch her head and say, "I don't do anything extra special. I cook just like the others."

That's where she's wrong. Unlike me she cooks with the sole aim of feeding the other person; making something delicious to suit the other person's palette; something that will make the other person happily satiated. For my mother, cooking was and is always about others. And that gives her immense pleasure. Nothing pleases her more than someone asking for second helpings at her table; or someone truly enjoying the most simplest of meals and mopping off even the last morsel of food on the plate.

Therein lies the difference. I cook -for myself. I cook when I feel like. I cook what I feel like. I cook the way I want it.

Whereas my mother does it all for the other person. I guess it is this love that peppers the food with that extra zing.

Sometimes, when my mother is cooking, I sit on a chair near the stove and chit chat with her. This picture was taken during a chit-chat session.When I clicked this picture it was just another ordinary picture. But later the more I saw it, the more I felt the `love' in every vein of her hands. The desire to make that perfect dish that would make ME happy.