Cooking – This is one of the activities which I wanted to avoid at any cost in my life since my college days. Cooking felt like some boring, lifeless task and I used to wonder what is so interesting in cooking that some people have cooking as hobby or passion. All those youtube channels and shows on cooking surprised me. So, life went by without me bothering about cooking.Life took a turn and I finally decided to cook. I learnt below things while cooking.
1.Cooking is an excellent tool to build mindfulness.Few seconds of mindlessness can ruin a delicious dish.Yes, just few seconds is all that is needed to ruin hours of hard work.
2.Cooking is a platform to create something delicious out of not-so-delicious ingredients. Salt by itself is not delicious. Same with oil and many vegetables like brinjal,potato,cabbage,beans etc. One cannot use fire alone to satisfy one’s hunger. Yet when vegetables, fire, salt, water, oil are brought together in the right proportion, magic is created and this magic can satisfy hunger, can bring joy, can bring good health, peaceful mind, good karma and can bring money too.
3.Cooking needs precision.A pinch of salt here and there can decide whether the food can be eaten or not. Few minutes of over cooking or under cooking can spoil the dish.
4.Cooking is a great tool to practice mantra chanting and positively influence the thoughts and emotions of family members. I have experimented with different mantras while cooking and have noticed that when i do invocation and cook,I get divine guidance to cook food in the right way. When mantra chanting is done while cooking,I noticed that the quality of food changes and it feels divine while eating.
5.Cooking is fun. The changing colors, aromas, taste, texture, sound thrills me. This is one activity which engages all five senses and this aspect of cooking makes it enjoyable. Yes, now I understood why some people have cooking as passion or hobby.
6.Cooking made me feel more grateful to the people who cooked for me and especially to my mother. In my younger days, I complained when salt was more or less or when things are burnt. There were days when I refused to eat just because curry did not taste like I wanted. Now, when I am cooking and when things go wrong inspite of my best efforts, I remember my younger days and I feel bad for all the tantrums I have thrown about food.Cooking has taught me how much hard work my mother has put in just to make me happy. Cooking has helped me fall in love with my mother all the more.
7.Cooking takes me closer to divine mother in the form of nature. Whenever I cook, I cannot help but appreciate mother nature for her abundance, rich colors, wide variety of tastes.In Hinduism, Divine mother has a form called Shakambari where divine mother is dressed in vegetables and fruits. It fills me with tremendous gratitude when I think Divine Mother comes to me in the form of vegetables and fruits and feeds me.Thank You Divine Mother for your compassion and love.
8.Whenever my mother cooked delicious dishes, I used to say – “mother, food is tasting like nectar” and I used to forget time and space. I used to go into some sort of bliss where nothing else mattered. I feel its a great privilege to give such happiness to our own self and to others.Cooking is a fantastic tool which helps a person to give joy to others. May be, this could be one reason why saints like Sai Baba cooked food and loved to feed their disciples.
9.I am able to connect more deeply with my sisters-in-law after I started cooking. I did not have many common topics with my sisters-in-law earlier to talk about. Our worlds are different. Cooking helped me understand their world, take their suggestions and bond better with them.
10.My husband believes in sharing house-hold work. When my husband and I cook together, it feels amazing. We both are creating something together with love. Cooking together has made our marriage more beautiful. We both realized that cooking together is an easy way to spend quality time together where we have sweet little talks while we watch the changing colors of food. It is definitely as thrilling as watching a beautiful rainbow together on a nice vacation.
These are the few things I learnt . I hope I cook more and learn more and bring happiness to myself and others through this new found passion of mine. And I also hope cooking will be my long-term love.
Sarve Jana Sukhino Bhavantu
