Author Prajwal Parajuly discovers that happiness in Sri City begins with a functioning kitchen

They were in the building hallways and the university shuttle, guffawing harder than anyone else. I saw them at the neighbourhood park — smug individuals who seemed better fed and better rested than all of humankind. And they chattered beatifically at Dhanush, the town supermarket, as though they had spent a week at a retreat getting their chakras aligned. 

I was in a different place. It didn’t help matters that resuming life in Sri City after six months away was proving to be more adventurous than I had bargained for. Surely I hadn’t glamourised things here while I was gone? I arrived home from New York to discover that my tiny bookshelf — a ghastly gray-and-white rectangle attached to the upper half of my living-room wall — had crashed to the ground. I had time and again let the authorities know that the damp from the winter monsoons had refused to leave even after the rains retreated. Was it any wonder, then, that a bookshelf had collapsed and its glass shattered?

Then there was the kitchen. When you try infusing life into your apartment after it has stayed empty for a while, you deal with spluttering taps, rusted utensils and the resurfacing of long-gone insects. The revolving trio of housekeepers that Krea University sends do a good job with sweeping and mopping but aren’t expected to touch the cabinets, counters, and fridge. I’d have to clean everything myself. I’d spend half a day getting rid of obstinate stains in the fridge when I should have been drafting my syllabus. To reward myself for morphing into Martha Stewart, I decided on a protein shake. The blender wouldn’t start. I took that as a sign to abandon this half-hearted embrace of housework and proceeded to eat a block of cheese. 

So, yes, the happy faces of my colleagues taunted me. I did not remember them smiling so much. Not at last year’s poker session at my place, which perhaps had more PhDs than any other game in the world. Nor at Aroma, the only restaurant for miles that has a liquor licence even if the food is multi-cuisine, that obnoxious euphemism a dead giveaway that nothing you eat will be too special. I noticed an easy swagger in my colleagues’ gait on campus, too. Before class and after class, before seminars and after seminars. And was that a smile I gauged at a departmental meeting? No one had any business being this content. There had to be a reason behind it. 

My colleagues, you see, had a hired a cook.             

House help is notoriously difficult to find around Sri City. It’s only a matter of time, friends would say. Every search — and indeed I had put forth many — had resulted in a dead end. When I was away, though, a colleague had fortuitously come across someone looking for a job. Soon, three other Krea people in the building hired Rajeshwari. Rajeshwari spoke some English, cleaned the kitchen after cooking and could be convinced to shop for your vegetables, the happy colleagues said. 

I employed her without an interview.

When my new hire first saw the kitchen, she clucked. The knives weren’t suited to chopping sturdy vegetables. She said she wouldn’t be able to cook without a pressure cooker. Like a chastened schoolboy, I immediately bought one. She said I had spent too much money on it. 

Rajeshwari is not a big fan of my induction stove but hasn’t said so. She finds the absence of a dish rack bizarre. She was resourceful enough to repurpose into a kitchen mat the carton in which the fridge came. When I forbade her from washing and reusing paper towels, she said “waste, waste” and laughed. 

Colleagues had warned me that I should tell Rajeshwari to go easy on the salt. And the oil. And the spices. She quickly realised that I liked my piquancy to come from green chillies and not from masala. My boiled eggs are perfectly peeled. My chicken never has that gross taste often boasted by chicken refrigerated overnight. There’s the all-pervasive smell of food in the apartment, which is taking some getting used to.

Rajeshwari has rearranged the fridge, and I now have three empty shelves. Dishes dry on kitchen towels on the counter. The dining table is disinfected, sprayed and sparkled. The university administration has finally convinced the landlord to paint over the damp-damaged wall. I, too, like my colleagues, have an inane grin plastered on my face. I am now ready to have people over. They will drink exquisitely awful red wine.  They will eat Rajeshwari’s food. They will play poker. They will ignore the bookshelf, which is still on the floor. Its glass has still not been mended.

Prajwal Parajuly is the author of The Gurkha’s Daughter and Land Where I Flee. He loves idli, loathes naan, and is indifferent to coffee. He teaches Creative Writing at Krea University and oscillates between New York City and Sri City.