Initiation into the Art of Cooking Biryani.

I needed:
1. To get off the phone so i could give all my attention to what had to go into it.
2. Somebody to clean the chicken before i ventured to touch it.
3. Plenty of patience, especially since my mother - who cooks Biryani in half a blink of an eye - was tutoring me and was constantly hurrying me up; and i like enjoying the process as much as the end product.

Every Muslim baby is taught to make Biryani even before it learns to babble. [And this i say, is irrespective of the sex of the baby, because i constantly see my Dad coming into the kitchen and dropping little in(or un, depending on the way you see it)-valuable tips into my Mom's already red-with-the-heat-of-cooking ears.]

Sadly, i was not one of those babies.

For me, it took being 24, and being driven out of my mind with vegetating at home for four days to give Biryani-making a shot. It's not like i was venturing into the kitchen for the first time, yet there was that mixture of anticipation and anxiety - shame on me if i screwed up on Biryani. It was an inherent part of being a Muslim, as precious and vital as the air one breathes. Thinking that my initiation would be ostentatious - not to the extent of having drums and shehnais in the background, and women throwing flowers on the path that led me to the kitchen and all, but just something like using the finest of ingredients, being dressed for it, and things like that - i instead had my mother shouting instructions to me from the bedroom, asking me to use the vegetables that Dad had purchased from the kaaka-angdi on the main road. (Yes, we DO use vegetables in non-vegetarian Biryani!)

Like a pro, i diced tomatoes while talking on the phone precariouly balanced between my left ear and shoulder. The onions proved a lot tougher, so i had to hang up and give the bulbs all my attention. As well as my tears.

That done, i marinated the chicken (and yeah, i ended up cleaning it and making faces worse than Calvin at the dinner table) with the basic masalas. Meanwhile, Mom shot instructions like pygmy darts and i scrambled all over the place getting the things together. The result was that there were packets and packets of ingredients strewn all around the stove, and my Mom tutted and told me that i'm so messy, i must have my father's genes playing dominant in me. I must have his tactfulness too, because Mom skipped two steps to making Biryani and told me that that's how it was done, and i thought it safer for my health to let it pass unnoticed.

We were finally down to the cooking. This couldn't afford to go wrong, so Mom was standing next to me by now to monitor everything i was doing. I didn't know onions take a really long time to turn golden brown, so every five minutes i was yelling out false alarms that they were so golden, they were giving Halle Berry's sepia tones a complex. Apart from that little thingummy, everything else went off as planned, and the Biryani was done in 20 minutes. Easy-peasy.

The three of us (Dad included) sat down to dinner. My mother beaming with pride at having taught me how to cook Biryani, my Dad sort of skeptical (this morning he asked me if i had a stomach upset, just because he had one) and me completely nauseated with the smells of cooking. I didn't have a choice, though. I had to eat, otherwise they'd think i was scheming to kill them by feeding it to them or something.

And so it was that we took our first bite, savouring the subtle flavours of the garam masala, the tenderness of the chicken, the aroma of ghee and fresh coriander and...umm... did someone forget to add the salt?

(P.S: The salt bit was just for effect. The Biryani turned out juuuuuuuuust fine. I'm hoping i'll be able to do it on my own the next time. Minus motherly supervision.)