When a hungry man tries to feed himself

It was our first time and both of us were scared. I had no idea how to proceed further. My hands were trembling. And my gut was churning with excitement and equal parts fear. There were pearls of sweat rolling down my neck and my chest felt constricted near the heart. I mustered all the courage I had and went for it. It was not what I had expected. It was tiring yet satisfying.

The omelettes that I had cooked, they tasted delicious and were awful and salty and amazing!

My friend had gone to work. I was alone at his place. After being tired of lying in bed in red underwear listening to sad songs, I finally decided to wake up at 12 PM. Irrespective of the fact that time standardisation organisations refer 12 PM as afternoon, it was morning to me. My caring friend had cooked vegetable rice. They were resting inside the closed cooker that proudly stood on stove. There were three eggs in a paper bag. So, without waiting further, I cut a tomato and an onion to make delicious omelettes.

When I began cracking the first egg using the front end of a spoon to lightly hit it, the egg broke. I was smart enough to place that egg in a plate but not smart enough to realise that my hits were too hard for that egg to bear. The yolk and sticky goo that were spilled in the plate were having pieces of calcium carbonate that I picked and threw away with my eagle eye sensitivity. Then the contents from plate were poured into a glass. Then the preparatory mixture for omelette was prepared after adding onion, tomato, salt and red chilli powder in the glass and stirring all of the contents. The omelette was then cooked by pouring this mixture on pan that had hot mustard oil in it. It looked like this:

Then came the second egg. This time my hits were gentle. Just when I was about to break apart the egg and let the contents fall in glass, it broke in my hand due to hard pressing. The yolk and sticky goo fell outside of glass and only half of the contents were inside. Then I went ahead to prepare the omelette that had almost half the volume of preparatory mixture as compared to the previous one. It turned out like this:

It got burnt from one side. I thought it would be crispier to eat but my highly un-trustable gut feeling turned out wrong. Once again.

The third omelette was finely prepared. No egg breaking trouble and no burning issues. The starting steps were as smooth as a baby’s bottom. Problem came up when I was flipping the side of that omelette. It got torn and then got torn some more. It unconsciously turned out into a nicely cooked scrambled egg!

I had my vegetable rice and omelettes and it was lovely. There was one thing that I didn’t like and that was the taste of that burnt omelette. Though I haven’t tried it, but if somebody licks coal or smears their tongue in paper ash, they would know what it felt to taste that omelette. The culinary gods have been unjust to me, I told myself. Many things in life are not tasty but we still lick, kiss and suck them. These were self-cooked omelettes and I was hungry. So irrespective of the taste, I ate all three of them.

My friend returned at night. He went to the kitchen saw the non-stick pan and asked me what I had cooked. Omelettes, I answered. He immediately took it to the sink and began scrubbing it. I had no idea what had I done. The disgraceful look on his face and the anger that was pouring out of his eyes in that moment enlightened me to a great fact. The culinary gods have really been unjust to me.