Never wanted to cook

When I look back, I realize I never wanted to cook in my life. I used to tell my mother that I would always keep a cook, because I was not meant to be one. Sometimes life takes us in directions we never imagined. I always wondered—someone who loved the phone and technology, how did I end up spending so much time in the kitchen?  

Cooking was never my passion. In fact, I disliked certain things like asafoetida (hing) so much that I never even wanted to touch it because of its strong smell. But fate had other plans. Slowly, I began cooking, and eventually even started creating online recipe collections.  

Now, I do enjoy cooking to some extent, but as the years pass, I feel my interest in it is gradually reducing.  

Cooking sometimes needs a break

It has been 20 years since my marriage, and in all those years I have cooked almost every single day. If I count the exceptions, they might add up to just about a month—or a little more—spread across all those years. Sometimes it feels like the cooking never stops, stretching from morning till night without pause.  

But these days, I find myself losing the joy I once had in cooking. I don’t know why. Perhaps it is because, in every middle-class home, the wife is expected to be everything at once—the cook, the laundry lady, the cleaner, the caretaker of the entire family. And now, as I step into the 21st year of marriage, the expectations from my husband remain unchanged, as if time has stood still.  

It makes me wonder: when will the roles evolve, when will the weight be shared? For years, I have carried the rhythm of the household, but somewhere along the way, the music of it has begun to fade.