Hello dearie,
Well I am in love with cooking. Cooking
relaxes me. Really! Whenever I am under a lot of stress: like I have to submit
a paper or make a presentation or do something remotely performatory, I need to
cook. For me, cooking is not a performance, I don’t do it to impress anybody or
please anybody. I just cook. It comes naturally to me.
Like all other cooking enthusiast I hunt down
recipes from the internet. Sometimes I even buy unknown ingredients and figure out
the recipes around them. But I never keep strictly keep to the given recipe. I
always change, innovate and improvise. This is the part, I like most.
This, I find familiar to Severus Snape and
his awe-inspiring potion making skills. The way he introduces first years to
their first potions class gives away his love for the subject.
Snape finished calling the names and looked up at the
class. [...] "You are here to learn the subtle science and exact art of
potion-making," he began. He spoke in barely more than a whisper, but they
caught every word—like Professor McGonagall, Snape had the gift of keeping a
class silent without effort. "As there is little foolish wand-waving here,
many of you will hardly believe this is magic. I don't expect you will really
understand the beauty of the softly simmering cauldron with its shimmering
fumes, the delicate power of liquids that creep through human veins, bewitching
the mind, ensnaring the senses... I can teach you how to bottle fame, brew
glory, and even stopper death— if you aren't as big a bunch of dunderheads as I
usually have to teach." (Rowling 1997)
But in the sixth book of Harry Potter
series, Snape’s true proficiency for brewing positions and his expertise in
understanding the craft was revealed when Harry found Snape’s the old potion
text book.
The whole book is littered with footnotes,
note to self, instructions and inscriptions. He excelled at not by following
blindly but by innovation and improvisation. Bullied and persecuted in his
childhood and youth, Snape took refuge into his text book. Slowly, consequently,
he fell in love with “the subtle science and exact art of potion-making” And
that is exactly what you do when you don’t just love something but fall in love
with it.
When you love something or someone, you
want things to be perfect, normative. A recipe or a relationship: You hunt down
the ingredients and follow the rules and hope (beyond hope?) that everything
goes picture perfect— just the way you expect it of everybody and just the way
everybody would expect it of you.
But when you are in love with something or
someone, you don’t need to look into formulas, methods or instructions: you
dare to tread beyond these limitations, these reasons. You just breathe and
feel, let your hair down and sync in with the rhythm of desire. It will guide
you to unlearn what it expected of you, it will train you to unapologetically
take risk and create something extraordinary. When you are in love, you no more look for picture perfect but just feel the urge
to make best of what you already have.
That is exactly what I do with cooking. I'm
in love: I promise I can make something unique and beautiful with whatever you can
spare for me.
Love,
Stotropama.
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