Waiting for the whistle

It was one of those typical days. My wife was in a tizzy, cooking multiple dishes. She was to go visit a friend for a few days and wanted to ensure the fridge was well stocked so that her two male dependents, yours truly, her husband, and son, did not starve. We love her cooking and were glad for her efforts, but felt we had to, at least for form’s sake, protest, “Oh, do not bother, Swiggy/Zomato zindabad!” She looked at us disapprovingly.

With a delicious aromatic dish on the pressure cooker and gas on sim, she told my son, I have other work to attend to, so please switch off the gas stove after two whistles. My son, who was ‘busy’ with, you guessed it right, his phone, barely looked up and nodded his head. I went out of the kitchen, the instructions having been directed only at my son, and sauntered in a bit later.

My son continued to be ‘busy’ head down, peering over the phone. There was a strong smell of burned food. “Something is burning,” I exclaimed. My son looked up from the phone to inform me, condescendingly, that the stove is on and that “you know I am to switch off the stove only after the pressure cooker has let off two whistles for which I am waiting.”

Well, I said it appeared the pressure cooker had forgotten to whistle and gone into burn mode—or more likely, the pressure cooker’s whistle had fallen on ears deafened by the charms of the smart phone. I switched the gas stove off, contemplating the next course of action. In stormed my wife to check on how her dish was faring. Her nose twitching, she said something had burned. I said, “Look, I have switched off the gas stove.”

She took the cooker under the tap and forced it open, even as I was telling her the dangers of doing so. She shouted in annoyance, “Here I am bending my back and cooking dishes for you, and you cannot even check what is happening to the food.” This was directed at both of us.

My son said, “But I was waiting for the whistle.”

“Waiting for the whistle! And you could not smell that something was burning?” Upset, she tried to retrieve the dish, which was all stuck to the bottom of the cooker. It was a very lost, burnt cause. Whistle podu is the anthem of the popular IPL team, Chennai Super Kings; obviously, our cooker was a true blood RCB fan and was in no mood to do so!