HANDLE WITH GLOVES
I know what you’re going to think after you read this. Some
of you will surely call or even drop by to tell me that I am ‘effing’ mad. But
I don’t know how, I don’t know why…
I feel like being a bit confessional…have to say what I want
to…and I have to write it down so I can say it without interruption. So please…allow
me…to get it off my chest.
The first time I had this feeling was when I was shooting a
film in a slaughter house. And the young man who was handling the meat cutting
buzz saw was expected to wear chain link gloves to protect his fingers…but he
was very uncomfortable with the idea of wearing what he called a ‘condom’ on
his fingers.
He was of the opinion that wearing the glove would make him
less sensitive than he was. And he needed every bit of sensitivity when cutting
meat, especially with that high speed saw buzzing at dangerous speeds.
I couldn’t on that day understand why he was fighting a
safety measure so obviously introduced for him. One small miscalculation, one
micro-second too late and he’d be left without a finger or two…or even attain
the hands free status that accident victims ever so often manage to aspire for.
A few days later life caught up with me and I forgot all
about the gloves and the buzz saw.
Now the strange thing. Last Saturday my friend Rahul Basu invited
me to be one of the judges at a Bengali version of a Hyderabadi Master Chef
kind of competition. I thought it was going to be an afternoon of delicious
Bengali dishes and perhaps a chance to practice my language skills. Sure I got
those too but I also got a surprise.
One of the rules announced was that all participants had to
wear gloves while cooking.
And before I could say ‘Handle’, my Gloves were off. You see
that’s my perennial problem. I cannot handle anything with my gloves on.
Especially life.
I walk into life taking on everything it throws at me with a
zest and enthusiasm that often goes beyond carelessness. I have been accused of
insensitivity whereas I have spent my whole life pleading guilty of
extra-sensitivity.
I allow everything to get to me. Whether it is pain or
pleasure. Life reaches me in unadulterated, unbridled and unprotected terms.
Raw. I don’t wear anything that softens the blow, makes me safer, or even makes
me immune by any stretch of imagination.
In short, I handle life without my gloves on. If I wear
gloves, I suspect that I will lose all feeling. That I will actually lose touch
with the world.
So now…Now imagine this. And this was as close to a
nightmare that I’d allow myself to be in.
A bunch of home chefs, all taking part in a fun competition,
suddenly told that they had to wear funny blue silicone/latex/plastic gloves at
every stage of cooking. From chopping meat, fish and vegetables to stirring up
a masala in a frying pan, what was usually done at home in plain and simple
bare hands fashion, now had to be attempted wearing a protective device.
What happens to the feelings? To the sensitivity? To the
sheer touch and feel that is such an integral part of cooking. But it wasn’t as
if they had a choice. They had been given the rule and they had to follow it.
So while I could easily imagine the discomfort the
participants were feeling while they struggled to chop an onion finely while
using glove clad fingers, and possibly sharper knives than they were used to…I
couldn’t do much else except pray that there were no accidents.
Now me being me, my mind travelled up some strange avenues.
And I wondered if my doctor friends who obviously wore surgical gloves almost
every day, ever had a touchy, feely romantic moment with their nurses while
they had their gloves on. Or did they pause for a moment, dis-glove (like
disrobe) and only then get naughty with their colleagues?
I imagined seeing my food cart friends who conjured up
bread-omelettes, vadas, mirchi bajjis, samosas and what have you in the most
primitive of conditions, wearing these alien gloves. The mind boggled.
My mind went on to the scene from a forgotten movie when a
lovely lady wearing long black gloves met the handsome hero who was wearing
winter clothes and leather gloves…both of them stopped a few feet from each
other. Kept the eye contact thing working while they elegantly removed their
gloves. And only then they moved closer and allowed their hands to touch.
Skin met skin. Flesh touched flesh. And emotions were
triggered off.
And here were a bunch of cooks who were ordered to be ‘hand-in-glove’
with rubber. Whatever would happen to the fledgling love between the fingers,
the knife and the onions. Between the fingers, the knives and the potatoes. Oh
my God, would the tomatoes go red in anger? Would the fish object to the
plastic touch? Would the prawns prefer their cutting fingers nude?
Every part of my being objected to this gross injustice. But
I forced myself to keep calm. Thought positive thoughts. And the cooking time
was soon over. There was no mishap. Just a couple of cases of the electric
stoves not working. And more importantly there was no report of chopped fingers
or any other body part.
And the food that was served to us Judges for tasting and
evaluation, was quite honestly…excellent.
So the gloves did not obviously create the havoc that I was
afraid of.
In my car, on the way back from the venue, I thought to
myself…have I been unnecessarily afraid of the gloves? Will I lose much flavor of
my life if I continue to taste it without inhibition? Have I perhaps given too
much importance to the freedom, the insolence of ‘au naturelle’…
I haven’t been able to freeze an answer…would you like to
try…maybe that’ll help.
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