“And… a dash of lime,” drawled Gordon Ramsay in his inimitable style. Benny clapped enthusiastically. Cuisines from different countries always had him spellbound. Dishes with exotic names came alive on his television screen. Every evening, the Kunchacko household reverberated with beeped cuss words. For the love of Jesus, the man of the house couldn’t fathom why Benny looked up to an eccentric English cook for inspiration, when life offered simple solutions like meen moili.
“Get me a glass of water,” the patriarch hollered. He shook his head as his wife got up.
“I want him to do some work,” he whispered.
“Just give me a second, accha,” said Benny.
“Keep your second to yourself,” senior Kunchacko retorted. Loosening his lungi a bit, he ambled to the dining room. Meen Moili was a dish he would die for if it was prepared by his wife.
“Nobody can cook fish the way you do,” he winked at his wife. Over a pile of rice, he heaped a generous helping of meen moili. Pleased by the aroma that wafted from it, he smiled and sat down to eat.
Quenching his thirst with buttermilk, he belched.
“Ramsay is a genius, accha,” Benny joined his father at the dining room, his eyes glinting.
“Stupid fellow. Ask him to prepare a simple meen moili and then I’ll rate it. Genius? My foot!”
The patriarch dismissed the genius of Gordon Ramsay with a nonchalant wave of his hand.
Author’s Notes:
This story was part of a monthly contest organized by Beyond the Box in the year 2021.
The prompt was to write a story that in which the first letter of each line/sentence should be in sequence as per the English Alphabet. For example, if the first sentence begins with ‘D’, the next one should begin with ‘E’, and so on.
The story won a prize.
