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Male empowerment

Young guys brush up their cooking skills and make themselves at home in the kitchen, writes RANEE KUMAR

MASTER CHEFS IN THE MAKING Enthusiastic youngsters get down to some serious work!

The kitchen is no longer a woman's domain. In fact, the accomplishment of culinary skills was never credited to women in the history of Indian cookery. It was only on the home front that women wielded the ladle, so to say. The surmise therefore is something akin to an industry versus small-scale sector.

Puranic lore had King Nala and Bheema dish out `cuisine royale' comparable to the chefs of five-star hotels today not to speak of large-scale cooking and catering at all Indian get-togethers and celebrations.

Somewhere down the line, housewives (daughters, daughters-in-law and mothers) ended up cooking day in and day out for their own family. Well, that's being relegated to the pages of history now. Cooking is anathema for today's liberated girl-woman.

Experimenting in the kitchen with the spouse around to assist, sounds a little more consoling but never into the drudgery of the routine two meals, nay! Not even one a day with your very own hands! Girls in general - non-employed being no exception - have taken a stand, which was long

due, away from their mothers' generation, just not to take up cooking at home as a habit or a hobby. When there is a blooming hospitality sector waiting with open arms to cater to the entire society with multifarious tastes, why not outsource our daily bread and live in peace?

At the other end of the spectrum are the guys fed by doting mothers with the foodstuff they needed till they developed their `favourite' dishes in the process of growing up from young brats to cool dudes. Rubbing shoulders with their female colleagues at BPOs, KPOs and LPOs, the guys are suddenly finding their wisdom teeth erupting in a serial order - and it's a painful reality! While most resign themselves to nostalgia of tasty home-made food made ages ago or so it seems, the smarter ones are out at week-ends trying a hand at a professional cooking institute for a fee to learn the age-old art of cooking a delicious meal! They are able to juggle spending `meaningful' time with girl-friends/wives, catching up with buddies, booze and also attend to some serious cooking lecdems to emerge as `empowered men' .

This is what Ashok, Mohan, Robert or Abbas have to say. "We are not shy of owning up that we'd like to cook unlike our dads. There is no way the girl we'd be getting married to will volunteer to cook on a daily basis. We can't expect her too since she's equally busy with her career. That's going to be me for domestic peace and happiness,'' says Vamshi, a software professional with a leading corporate. Vinita, his fiancée finds herself, "extremely lucky to get a guy who's already adept at cooking. It's so nice to have good home-made food as soon as you turn in after a hectic day at office,'' she beams.

Sensing the dire necessity, cooking institutes have mushroomed with varied menu and timings tuned to individual and group needs as well. Though most of them started with the idea of catering to working women and housewives, today their clientele profile has undergone a drastic change of gender - more and more boys/guys going abroad or working here are keen to put their dormant culinary skills to test. "I have software professionals coming in and boys taking crash courses for going abroad not to talk of girls planning to get married. I've divided my students into batches with the working men preferring weekend classes,'' says Ruchika Aboti whose cooking institute is a decade-old.

Hoor Girglani conducts classes at home in oriental, western and local cuisine in batches. Boys ready to go abroad form part of her weekend batches. Farzana Baig of `No Excuses Institute' known for traditional Hyderabadi exotica has inquiries from guys pouring in and plans to start an exclusive male batch once she finds the number viable.

The adage -`a way to a man's heart is through his stomach,' no longer applies to the spouse but perhaps to the professional institutes whose incomes are bound to burst at the seams.

Learning centres

Fees range from Rs, 350 to Rs.1,500

Ruchika Culinary Institute: 66488178/ 66335515

No Excuses Institute: 9246378915 (Farzana Baig)

Hoor Girglani: 98480 41000;

Goels: 9392411538/ 934661768

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