DAY 152

I took this photograph while standing in the middle of an extremely hot kitchen of a hotel.The frenzy inside the kitchen of a commercial establishment has to be seen to be believed. There is a lot of passion for the craft inside a kitchen.

The young man in the picture was thoroughly involved in putting a dish together. He was careful. He was disciplined. He was meticulous. He was passionate. He was loving every moment of it.

And he was sweating!

It is my camera that pointed out this teeny-weeny detail to me. I held my breath hoping and praying that the dangerously poised salty-pearl-drop on his face wouldn't find its way into the food. He quickly wiped it off, and went right back to his piece-de-art.

I heaved a sigh of relief.But even before I could say `fish' his face was pock-marked with sweat again...the temperature in the kitchen was such that.

I could take it no more. I turned around walked out of the kitchen and sat at the table, only to look up when a plate was shoved in front of me. A plate of fried fish. The same dish the young man was working on - it was beautiful. I could see that he had taken care to make the dish special for me. It was delicious looking.
Yet, I was looking for that unseen drop of sweat. Bile rose to my throat.

I looked up and saw the eager face of the young man waiting to hear what I had to say about his labor of love. I smiled. Forked out a piece and shoved it in my mouth. The taste erased the questions in my mind. Soon I was enjoying my meal and the conversation. Sweaty details all but forgotten.

When we eat at restaurants we know, in the back of our minds, that a 100 things can go wrong back in the kitchen and that we might be eating the result of those 100 things gone wrong. Yet, we trust the unknown faces who's made that delicacy sitting in front of us.

When we go to a hospital we trust our doctors implicitly. They take our loved ones into the operation theater. And we stand on this side of the closed doors not knowing what is happening on the other side. Yet, we trust our doctors to do good.

We trust absolute strangers, people whom we have met for the first time, we trust the degrees after their names, we trust a warm smile, a firm handshake and the quite confidence of people whom we encounter on a daily basis.

We trust them to do us good. We trust them with our lives. With our money. With our food. With all the basics of our lives. Humans are essentially very trusting beings.

Then why is that sometimes, we don't trust ourselves?

We know us well, yet we refuse to trust ourselves. Ironic?