Boiled Omelette

At twilight I peep out from the balcony and realize I ran out of my supply of bread and cucumber for next day’s lunch. Many people love food shopping in this world, among them my father is a champion when it comes to buying fishes. His ‘Bongali’ blood binds him to fish, every day he will go to bazaar and return with more than six overflowing poly-bags of fresh food items. Sometimes its avalanche of green leafy vegetables at other times coin sized fishes destined to cut down ones throat or simply an assault of snake gourds.

Today it’s about my regular rant, my life’s biggest problem is with the word food, eons ago when I was a moving pumpkin I would devour anything given to me. I would relish it with such a pure conscious that my fragile heart was warmed up by layers of fat. Now that I am on proper BMI scale I dislike eating. So here I am sitting out on the balcony watching the sky turn dark and I expect the poetic mind to give some sweet words for my twitter poetry, but pops up the thought- I ran out of bread. 

When the sky turned into black veil, I stretched my exhausted body and yawned out some curses. I got into some decent garment and left my hostel on my green bicycle. When I reach the nearest food selling establishment I frowned. There is this rickety shop at the corner in which sits the vendor. He is the human who must have inspired the illustration for Aladdin’s evil uncle. He sits there on his crumbling mora(a round furniture) and turns his head around like an owl with every passing vehicle. 

He sells me two cucumbers and four eggs and hands them to me in the poly-bag with such care as if they were newborns. When I am putting the eggs in my clothe bag he warns me never to keep eggs in my bicycle basket- carrier. But when my hands plan to keep my cucumbers in basket he warns me again, jerky road would spoil them and the fellow had no bread to offer with the advice. I do as the expert owl says and ride away from the shop.

Once I get inside my cozy dirty room, I bring out my purchase and as my tiny heart had feared, my cucumbers attacked the eggs.  One of my egg was mutilated and spilling itself out in the poly-bag. Now the miser that I am thinks of what to do, I could not waste my egg, they cost me five rupees each. If it was one of my ex-roommates, I could always ask them to fry it for me. But now I am alone and I do not own a frying pan or stove. What do I do of this broken egg? 

My biggest and most effective policy is, when in doubt call up the Mother! As the tring-tring goes on I wait for my Mom to pick up. It’s a classic story in our household, my Mom despite owing a touch phone, a smart phone and a calling tab is never near the mentioned objects. On top of it we do have a landline connection. At last ring, a hello breaks out and it belonged to a male, who happened to be my father. I was surprised he could receive the call, as he is a bit clumsy. 

In full throttle ‘bangal’ I poured out my problem. And the reply comes in same crispy atrocious dialect. It was simple, I had to boil water and drop the egg when bubbles were cracking up. As if doing the deed was so easy! I happily repeated his words and assured him that I totally got his method. I take a deep breath and look at my surroundings.

I see a steel bowl and sealed packet of butter. I recall a dish my Mom cooks for me, called Egg Paneer. I be crafty and butter bowl nicely and pour my smashed egg in the bowl. I add chat masala (Spices) and mix them. Next moment I bring out my electric kettle and fill it up with water and drop the steel bowl in it carefully. I cover up the kettle and let kinetic energy do the work. Though what my Mom does has delicate touch of flavours and years of experience, my end product was degraded version of her art. A pathetic imitation Plato would have said. 

Fifteen minutes later I prove necessity is the mother of invention. I have soft yellow spongy creation of egg. Once I cut out a piece and put it in my mouth, I figure its tastes just like eggs should do. Soon the photograph of the creation was circulating in my friend circle and my elder sister labeled it as pocha (bad).  Yet I take pride, I just learned cooking and created another dish without the use of fire! And I even gave it a good name! Boiled Omelette!

It looks fine! A Little pale may be, lets not forget my cucumber attacked it. 

P.S- I am still wondering, if I should upload the photograph on Instagram?

thanking you to bear with me
paulOaries.