COOK SETS KITCHEN ON FIRE chapter from memoir-in-progress

 

COOK SETS KITCHEN ON FIRE 

by Nighat Na-koja

Ata, the cook, sets the kitchen on fire. Well, almost.

Ata, phone wedged between ear and shoulder, tosses red chillies into smoking oil. The oil splutters, and the frying pan catches fire. Plumes of smoke billow out of the kitchen as if issuing from a fog machine. At that very moment, Abba is coming out of his bedroom and walking across the hallway to the dining room with Atif’s help. I am also on my way to the dining room to have lunch with Abba. I pass the kitchen and smell the smoke even before I see it.

Oh God, what now!

I peer into the kitchen, covering my nose. Ata is standing at the stove, phone still clamped to his ear, waving his free hand frantically at the smoke rising from the frying pan. My instinctive reaction is to shut the kitchen door to contain the smoke, but much of it has already escaped into the hallway. I am coughing, and the dupatta over my nose is doing little to help. I rush to the dining room to see how Abba is doing.

                                                                                      ***

When I saw Abba’s red face, his whole body heaving from unstoppable coughing, and his struggle to breathe, I was ready to rush back to the kitchen and dunk Ata’s head into the frying pan. Atif was thumping Abba’s back in a futile attempt at smoke removal. I opened all the windows and turned on the ceiling fan to its highest setting, hoping that increased air circulation might, by some miracle, clear the smoke. It took several minutes during which I panicked until Abba’s coughing subsided and his flushed face returned to its more normal colour.

I went back to the kitchen to cross-examine Ata. He was standing by the stove, looking somewhat embarrassed, as if he’d just been caught accidentally setting off a fire. I saw the blackened frying pan into which he had thrown red chillies.

 

What do you think your were you doing? I yelled. You almost killed Abba!

I was just adding chillies to the oil in the frying pan,' he said, as if this explained everything.

Yes. I want to know why you were adding red chilli powder to smoking oil?

You told me to heat up the left over daal and give it to all of them for lunch.

So what?

R says he can’t eat this kind of daal. It has no spice. So I was trying to make it spicy.

Regardless of what R says, who adds red chilli powder into smoking oil? Have you lost your mind? Where did you learn to do that? And doing it while you are on your phone!

My wife had called. What can I do?

Your wife called! You couldn’t tell her to call you back a little later? You were on the phone while adding chillies to hot oil. You could’ve set the whole house on fire and choked Abba to death,' I said, exaggerating somewhat. But so what?

Ata didn’t have much to say in his defense. There was no reason for trying to spice up the daal for R’s sake when R wasn’t even there. R worked the night shift. And what did Ata, who had called R a Siraiki snake, care about R’s preferred spice level? Ata wanted to spice up the daal for himself. I had seen green chillies on the side of his plate at every meal. Now he was just attempting to save his own skin by blaming R in R’s absence. The sad thing about the world is there’s nothing new in it at all.

I returned to the dining room and told Abba what Ata had done, omitting, of course, the part where I wanted to dunk his head in the frying pan.

Tell him to come and speak to me, Abba said. I’m going to fire him right now.

No, no. Abba, just scold him, but don’t fire him. He has small children.

Ata refused to come out of the kitchen and face Abba. But eventually, he had to. He crept in, in his red apron, his face blanched, and stood quietly to Abba’s left. Abba had no vision in his left eye, so he couldn’t tell Ata was standing there.

Abba, Ata has come, I said.

Where’s your mobile? Abba turned towards Ata to face him.

Mere paas hai, Sir, Ata said, pulling it out of his kurta pocket.

Give it to me. And you are not getting it back. If you want to work here, this mobile stays here. With me.

Ata looked at me pleadingly. I shrugged and looked steadfastly at Abba.

If you want to work in this house, you are not going to use this mobile. Samjhay?

Ji, Sir.

You think this is a joke?

No, Sir.

Then why were you talking on the mobile when you’re cooking?

I made a mistake, Sir.

Power works. That’s why power is so addictive. I couldn’t believe Ata just said he had made a mistake! He was offering an apology instead of making the kind of excuses he was making with me.

Abba placed Ata’s smartphone, with its pink-hearts plastic cover, on the dining table by the side of his stack of newspapers.

The phone stays here. You go.

Ji, Sir.

Ata must have had a very miserable afternoon without his phone. He and his mobile were inseparable. It was almost a part of his body. That evening, I checked for his mobile on the dining table. It wasn’t there. Ata had sneaked in when Abba left the dining room and taken it. He knew Abba would forget about confiscating his mobile.

A few weeks later, somebody snatched Ata’s mobile while he was getting into a shared rickshaw on his way home. Divine justice I called it.

I suppose you were holding it in your hand when it was snatched? I asked, almost grinning. Ah, such glee I felt in that moment.

Yes.

What did you expect then?

It cost me 30 thousand, Ata said, grief-stricken. I got it just two months ago.

You wasted 30 thousand on a phone? I asked, feeling even more gleeful. And then to carry it in your hand!

I bought it to save photos of my children on it.

Yes, I believe you. And for non-stop video calls. And for cricket matches, I said.

After the frying pan incident, I wrote up five commandments for Ata in Urdu, thinking that if the commandments are clearly stated, they are more likely to be followed. I handed the note to Ata.

·         You shall never use your phone when you are in the kitchen.

·         You shall take calls only when you are taking a break.

·         You shall never add red chillies to hot oil.

·         You shall only use green chillies on the side if you want to make your own food spicy.

·         You shall not add extra spices or oil or chillies to our food.

Read it, I said, commanding him.

I can’t read, Apa.

You can’t read? I asked, feeling a twinge of pity for him.

Ata said he had run away from his village to find work in Karachi when he was still a young boy. He had studied up to class 3, but he couldn’t read or write.

In that case, take this note outside and have it read out to you. Then bring it back. And I am going to stick it here, I said, pointing to the refrigerator door. And I will review it every week with you.

Ata went outside, had the note read out to him by his compatriot, the chowkidar, and brought it back. I stuck it on the refrigerator door.

Okay, now tell me what it says, I said, pointing to the note.

It says I should not use my phone in the kitchen. I shouldn’t add red chillies to hot oil in the frying pan.

You better follow everything it says, or you know what…Abba will fire you if it happens again.

A couple of days later, Ata had bought a candy phone for one-tenth the price of his smartphone.

Things went back to how things were before Ata set the frying pan on fire, with some minor adjustments. Ata continued to use his phone while he was in the kitchen, ignoring commandment #1 blithely. But at least it wasn’t a smartphone, so he couldn’t make video calls or watch cricket. He did, however, stop taking calls while he worked at the stove. If he got a call, he went outside the kitchen to answer it. He did not add red chilli powder to hot oil again. Abba, of course, forgot that he had ever confiscated Ata’s phone, which, in the grand scheme of things, was probably for the best.