The Cook's Story

Long ago in a small town there lived an old Brahmin who was a famous cook. He was famous in many nearby villages and towns and was busy the whole year round. People who ate at the festivals or functions where he cooked talked about things that they had eaten. They discussed how evenly the vegetables were cut in the aviyal; They talked about how round the pappadams were; They said how the tastes in all that he cooked somehow worked together to give pleasure. They praised everything he cooked but everybody agreed that his saambaar was incomparable and without a doubt the best in the world. They talked about how it was just the right colour, just the right smell, just the right sourness, just the right mix of spices and also how it was somehow more than all this put together. How it had a strange wonderful taste that no other saambaar they had ever tasted had.


In fact because of his famous saambaar the cook was known to everybody as saambaaranna. There was always a line of people outside his house who wanted him to cook saambaar at their functions. At these places such was his reputation that women and men dressed in their finery would crowd around to watch him cook.

He enjoyed all this attention and tried to make his job appear to be more like a magic show than just cooking food. He had his secret recipes and would take ingredients from various pots and jars and also from secret packets that he carried tied around his waist. Over the years he had become very good at the way he performed this show. He talked all the time with the watching people and told them some things and hid some other things till people thought he was a superstar. When people asked about his magic recipes he only smiled and said ‘My lips are sealed’.

One day in a big marriage ceremony he was taking his ritual bath in the pond before starting to cook when a small boy noticed something unusual. Being a rather clever boy he put two and two together and arrived at the correct answer. He ran to his relatives and shouted,

‘Come quickly everybody, I have discovered saambaaranna’s secret recipe.’

When a number of people gathered he hurried down to the pond with them. Saambaaranna was still in the water enjoying his bath but on the steps of pond where his clothes and secret packets were kept were two cats. They were eating the powder fallen out of a torn packet.

The people understood! The special taste in their saambaar over the years in their vegetarian functions came from dried fish powder!

Saambaaranna noticed the angry people coming towards him and didn’t wait to collect his things but swam to the other end of the pond and ran away to another country where nobody knew about him and his secret saambaar recipe.

(Illustrated by my 9 year old son Srikant)