Things you won't learn from Americans about Barbecues.

So, you know how when it's summer, Americans love making the most of it and spending the day out at the back of their houses BBQ-ing and sipping on some beer and making it all look like a breeze? Well, it's not as easy as it looks, i can assure you.

In our excitement to try out the newly-acquired barbecue and grill set at grandma's place today, my mother went and bought herself some boneless chicken, mushrooms, capsicums and giant-sized onions. And then, true chef style, she proceeded to marinate the chicken and dice the veggies. While i rode around town looking to buy coal for the barbecue, and came back with five kilos worth of coal and grubby black hands. (Coal's pretty cheap, by the way. 18 bucks for a kilo.)

Then we proceeded to figure out the best place to set up the barbecue. The space in front of the house was not an option because we didn't want the neighbours to see us. (Thank God we didn't grill out in the front, but for entirely different reasons.) We tried setting it up in the kitchen but that would mean the ceiling would resemble a black hole once we were done. Terrace, no. Too much work to shuttle between upstairs and downstairs for everything, plus it was hot. Since our choices were limited, the only one left was the back passage. So we set it up.

Next, i proceeded to line the base of the barbecue with foil. And then i put the coal grill on it. And then i put the grill. Now this is where it gets interesting: the instructions said, "Pour cooking oil or kerosene over the coal, and in 20-30 minutes, the coals should be hot enough to barbecue stuff on it." Because we're not Kerosene people, we poured cooking oil generously, lit a match and threw it on the coal with smug grins.

And then we waited. And waited. And kept waiting.

We poured more cooking oil. My mother tore up some cloth from somewhere, lit that and put it in. We burned 10 newspapers. We went to two neighbours begging for Kerosene.

Nada.

"You have to fan the flames!", said my cousin.

By then, i was sitting cross-legged in front of the barbecue, willing the coals almost telepathically to burst into flames. I turned to her and said, "Yes, for that, we need to have fire. We don't."

After half an hour of futile paper-burning, emptying three quarters of the big Homelite matchstick box and my mother throwing weirdass shit like Vinegar - that's how desperate we were - to set the coals on fire - my granmother, who had quietly been hearing the commotion from her bedroom, decided to put us out of our misery - "There's Kerosene under the sink!"

I don't think any of us have ever been so ecstatic to see fire as we were when we doused the coal in Kerosene and lit it up. It was be-yoo-ti-ful. So lesson number one: Use Kerosene only.

Then, the instruction manual said, fan the flames. Now that was a family affair. With the exclusion of my grandma and one of my cousins, every one of us took turns at fanning the flames. We're very proud of the little mound of muscle we've developed on our arms - some left, and some right. Because fanning the flames is a TIRESOME PROCESS! My God, i've never exerted myself so much physically other than in  kickboxing! Like, what the hell is that? And the bloody coals were kinda damp, so it took forever to get them going! So that's lesson number two: Always use dry, porous coal. And lesson number three: Get some serious fanning equipment so you won't need ten fans for yourself when you're done.

We started building the coal fire at 12:30 and were at it till 3:45. By the end of it, we weren't pretty sights. My hands were stained black and would have seemed more at home on a mechanic or a ragpicker. I still can't get the grub out from under my nails. Our faces were stained black. And the house, despite the verandah grilling, was full of smoke. And that's the biggest lesson from this thing: Barbecueing ain't no joke. You have to get down and dirty and sweaty and icky. Summer picnics and tables set on the lawn with pretty children running around and the mother smiling in a pretty summer dress as the dad looks on, giving a wideass smile and is giving you two thumbs-up? It's a myth. American fiction. An absolutely evil plot by hyper-imaginative minds to lure you into buying barbecue sets.

And that's the biggest lesson out of the BBQ: If you really have to, get somebody else to do the dirty work for you. You just sit and eat. Because the only good thing coming out of the entire process is the food. Amen.