A Facebook Status Update, Cooking And Life!

That was a beautiful facebook status update:

A photographer went to a dinner. The hostess welcomed him saying, “Your pictures are great. You should have an excellent camera.” The man just smiled. After the dinner was over when he was about to take leave he told the hostess, “The food is great. You should have an excellent stove.”

What is more important to make a great dish? Good ingredients or the right recipe? Or both? Well no prizes for guessing that right.

I once wrote in the cookery section in Indusladies about this issue. When a group of South Indian tourists staying in Udaipur Taj wanted curd-rice the Chef brutally refused their request.

“I’ll give you rice and curds. And then it’s your headache.”

“Why can’t you just mix the two, add a dash of salt, throw some chillies, cucumber and if possible some mustard and serve that to us?”

“That to me is a mixture and not a dish. I am a Chef who makes dishes from approved recipes.”

The argument continued till the General Manager spoke to Chennai Taj and asked the Chef there to fax the menu for curd-rice.

Ok, you have the right ingredients. You have the perfect recipe. Our own Chitvish has got recipes for thousands and thousands of dishes. So much so that it has come out as a mobile app.

Are they enough? Definitely not. You need a cook, somebody like you to convert the ingredients and recipe into a delicate dish. And here’s the trick.

With the same ingredients and the same recipe, will two different cooks get the identical result? Surely not.

Even if the cooks are identical twins who grew up together the dishes will be different. That’s the human element. That makes the whole thing fascinating.

Of course restaurant chains like KFC and McDonalds can standardize the procedure and minimize the human differences and yet they cannot be eliminated.

That applies to every activity, be it gardening or writing, accounting or poetry, painting or photography.

I have been to many factories in the course of my professional work. Normally they won’t let you see the production process.

Because they are afraid that you might copy them and become their competition. In one factory near Madurai they even took my mobile phone and laptop lest I might take pictures with them. I understand their concern.

They should have paid crores of Rupees for the knowhow and do not want them to be copied by somebody free of cost.

But go to Toyota, the world’s greatest car manufacturer. You are free to go anywhere and take as many pictures as you want. Toyota’s philosophy is different.

They tell you through their actions, “We are not what you see. We have a highly automated process but it is handled by highly motivated, trained and responsible human beings. We are able to turn out a car like a Prius or a Corolla Altis because of a strange chemistry involving materials,(ingredients) technology(recipe) and our people(human element). You can never replicate it. It’s a challenge.”

But when I say that human element is important in every art I don’t mean that you should deliberately plan to stand out from others by attempting to do something different. In fact you can produce the best result when you jell with the process completely.

When Revathi Krishna plays the Veena you can never say where she ends and where the instrument begins. The artist and the instrument are fused into one entity.

The famous Pattimanram Speaker Bharathi Bhaskar complimented my writing in the book-release function held in January 2011.

She told the audience, “Many writers leave a clear mark of themselves in their short stories. Their style, their way of handling the subject will be shouting to you “I am here. See me."

But this man always absents himself in his stories. Only the story is there and not the author. Many times I would have read and enjoyed the story without even knowing who wrote it.”

Some of my relatives felt that it was almost like an adverse comment. But it was a compliment which I loved.

But that’s not a big deal. If you love your readers you can write like that. If you love your family you can cook like that. If you love your audience you can play like Revathi Krishna.

So we are back to square one. It’s love which makes all the difference.