Mushtaque B Barq

A novel way

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The old and cracked coffee mug in my kitchen once again winked at me. I ignored. Once, twice but third time the wink was romantic in texture. How long one can pay no attention to the old love! Third wink did the trick, lured my sanity, filled my eyeballs and above all raised a wave in the backyard of my mind.   Old habits die hard. For a cup of coffee, one doesn’t need permission from home ministry. What all you need is to fix the frame of your narrow pupils to make the pots and bottles carry out on strong stimulus running within your imaginative city center.

On the door of refrigerator was the ammunition, much needed one— coffee powder. Well! God knows why on the earth, my hands always pull that forlorn door of refrigerator whenever I enter in the premises of kitchen. If only at the last visit, my eyes had already examined all the stuff on the chilled shelves, still my next immediate visit re-exams it. A kind of obsession. What makes me do so is still a mystery to me, but an obnoxious bustle in the records of home ministry, a tussle of trivial tendencies and harsh kitchen rules. Oh! These self made rules spoil spasmodic currents of made-up carte du jour.

Sunday is fun day. And fun knows no rules. What devil in me branches over a tremor of transforming the kitchen on Sunday into a wrestling ring with all pots and pans, cups and spoons, bottles and beverages as my audience? Much loving but monotonous audience silently watching my madness, my imaginative concoctions. I often do as what my newly above suspicion pulse orders me to do. What next is kind of spirit that has always pulled my imaginative cooking at fore. A freshly purchased container turned out to be the casualty of my mood. The guiltless container was now a tool of my tyranny like poor subjects of an unfortunate nation asking for their rights.

In the meantime, sizzling stove started to sing the ballads of old bard, encouraging my fingers to explore the recesses of refrigerator door to grace the gracious mixture of unruly romance of crushed beans.  And who knows what else has been crushed along for ages. We read labels and believe, for we have no choice but to rely on advertisements. We are customers and we buy cursed stuff in polished packs without taking notice of our own belly basket. Anyway, whatever these good looking coffee bottles carry, mood knows no constraint, and we believe and behave according to our needs. Potion or preservative who knows? Best thing first, introspection is second thought in these matters. We take whatever we like to and after consuming we have better option to think till we forget and try another concoction in the kitchen of our mind. And life goes on.

Now for the first time the steel base of the poor vessel has to taste its first dose of flames. Silent are the cries of criminals. Only innocents raise the dust. A cup of water serves better when the plate is hot like one reaches home after getting bruised by sun beams of summer glare and receives a glass of chilled water. A spoon full of chocolate dust was the next to be tested. The transparency of water for all practical purposes is to be compromised. The dust changed its colour and the aroma tossed the curtains of nostrils in the directions yet to be labelled by experts. A swirl makes it nastier. How good it is to prepare when alone you are the stakeholder of your own drafts and designs, no tension of criticism, no more responses and reactions.

In the list of ‘what next’ was waving at me ‘milk’. Although it looks as white as sinless sage, but who knows how much rubbish lies in the backyard of saintly mind! They say ‘holy faces are the best devils’. Milk, I prefer to add at the end for reasons. If at all it turned to be a blend of chemicals, let it spoil the show at the end not before climax. Second, it matters, whether to enjoy the blood of beans without sheen of synthetic syrup or add a shower of artificial liquid. At times Mr. Mood demands tart in the cup and at times a blend of both.

Last thing at the end. The sweet sugar. Sweet is synonym of sugar and antonym of diabetes. Choice is open. A cup of coffee or a mug of hemlock. Let you all forget the consequences for a moment and enjoy a cup of coffee with me. Taste indeed varies, let you not expose it on the table, but anyway responses and reaction can reveal and explain what measures to be taken in future, for half measures have half marks.

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