A Five-Star Meal

In the seventeen years of my supposedly masculine life, I never wanted anything to do with the kitchen. I had never wanted to cook a meal for myself. I never wanted to handle a knife, I never wanted the scorching heat of the stove to burn my face, but boy was I starving.

After a tiresome yet fun session of basketball at the YMCA, hunger took over me as it would an empty-handed hunter. I felt the nutrients excreting from my body through my sweat, if that’s how science works, and I desperately needed to get those nutrients back in my body. On the train ride back home from the YMCA, my mind began filtering through the different dishes I wanted to eat. I could not choose a dish I wanted, from the modest number of dishes which were circulating through my brain—it was either rotini pasta or chicken legs with rice or garlic naan with kabob or lamb stew with naan or cheese bread or biryani or chicken sliders or cheese sticks or Turkish bread or chicken tenders. I really had a limited choice. The decision was tough, but I had quite some time to think about it, after all, it was going to take me 1 hour to get home on the train. Stop by stop, I filtered through the dishes in my brain, and I finally settled on the prize winner– lamb stew with naan. Though the walk home from the train station was like a path through hell, I had finally made it home.

I didn’t even care to take a shower or change my clothes once I got home. It was like every time I got hungry and wanted to eat, my muscle memory simply led me straight to my sisters. Being the only and youngest brother of seven sisters, it was taboo for me to step foot into the kitchen. I was always the one being served. I went to one of my sisters and asked her to make me food, though I really wanted to TELL her. She said no, explaining how she got a lot of homework from her German chemistry professor. She was continuously yapping about that same chemistry professor for about 5 minutes straight, which I really didn’t care about because I wasn’t in college at the time. But now that I am in college and have an old Iranian chemistry professor with a heavy unfathomable accent, I can’t totally sympathize with her. However, at that moment I didn’t really give a shit. I just wanted to eat. After her I went to my other sister, and she apparently was working on a project for an art competition she was participating in. She also didn’t have any time to make her little baby brother any food. I thought to myself, why do they think that what they have to do is more important than my growling stomach.

At this point I wouldn’t be wrong to say that I was starving. By the time I made it to my last sister, I looked like a beggar, going down a street from person to person asking for some change. However, instead of asking for some change, I was kind of asking for a 5-star buffet meal. After getting that final refusal I just lost it. Not even one of my sisters could find time in their schedules to cook for me. Their refusal filled me with anger. I thought to myself, how could my sisters be so busy in their own lives, neglecting their supposed responsibility of cooking for me? I always had this belief that my sisters were mandated by some divine revelation to cook for me. I always believed that cooking was a woman’s job and that a man should keep away from the kitchen. However, I soon came to realize that I didn’t willingly adopt this belief. The belief that my sisters were obligated to make food for me and take care of me was unwillingly instilled into my brain, and at the time, I didn’t realize that I was feeding into cultural misogynistic stereotypes

I was at odds with myself and my beliefs. My brain was clouded with so many thoughts which were chaining me, not allowing me to step forth into the kitchen. I didn’t believe that it was my job, a man’s job to go into the kitchen and make food. I remember my father always saying to me, “Raja, don’t you shame me by taking on a woman’s responsibility. You are here to be the man of the house, provide and protect the family, not to meddle with the kitchen.” I acted upon these beliefs like a puppet, with the strings being controlled by my father. However, something didn’t feel right. I began to wonder if these beliefs were my very own or if I was just an embodiment of my father’s beliefs. In that little fleeting moment, my true conscience showed itself, and I desperately clung to it.

I decided for the first time to experience life the way I wanted to, through my very own eyes. I finally manned up, picked up my sister’s crusty old cookbook which had the secret formulas for all of my favorite recipes and decided to make the food myself. I came face to face with many challenges throughout this expedition of mine. I had trouble with the simplest of things, like even finding the different ingredients necessary to make my lamb stew and naan. There were so many different cabinets and drawers in the kitchen, and I had no clue where my sisters kept each of the ingredients. I almost felt like a tourist in a foreign land. After finding all the ingredients, I finally began mixing and pouring and measuring and whisking. I followed the recipe step by step and soon enough, I had the stew cooking on the stove, and I had the dough for the naan ready. I must point out that the heat from the stew on the stove was difficult to bare. It felt like my skin was peeling off, however, I sort of liked that feeling. I felt like I was on the way to accomplishing something great and therefore, I didn’t let any pain stop me. After about 3 hours, I had finally finished cooking my food. Surprisingly, I didn’t really feel hungry anymore. My hunger was quenched by my new experience of cooking, though I definitely needed to drink a cup of water. I won’t go into much detail about how the food tasted because it would be embarrassing, but I will say that it wasn’t as bad as tuna fish.

Now that I reminisce on my early cooking days, I was a really bad cook. After all, everyone knows how the lamb stew turned out. It was a similar situation with my second, third, fourth and up till like the tenth dish (maybe more). I realized that if Gordan Ramsey were to witness taste my dishes, my ears would be the subject to some beautiful English words. Though, every time I made a new dish, I was yearning to learn more about cooking and how to become a better cook. Cooking almost became my favorite hobby, rivaling basketball. Looking at my current cooking level, I would say that I’m a 3-star chef. Some dishes turn out amazing while other dishes make people puke. But, as I said before, I am continuing to learn more about cooking, and I have made it a goal of mine to become a better chef.

Thinking back, I had no unique beliefs representing my individual experiences or perspectives. The bitter truth is that I was a vessel for my familial, societal, and cultural beliefs- and so was my father and his father and his father before him. So, I do not blame my father for screwing me over, in fact, he was screwed over himself. Living by stereotypes and limiting people’s experiences solely because of gender was the lifestyle passed on to him by the generations before him. Fortunately, I was courageous enough to shape my own destiny. I was able to break free from these cages for myself and my future generations so we can all fly high without boundaries. It’s crazy how one can feel this boundless just by now being able to cook, but for me, the simple task of cooking a meal was a life changer.