Your Kitchen Is a Bad Investment. Fight Me.

Let me begin with a simple question. Why are we still worshipping the home kitchen like it’s the last sacred cave on earth? We’re a species that can build satellites, splice genes, and argue for six hours on Reddit about whether Maggi counts as a full meal. Yet the moment someone suggests that maybe every house doesn’t need a fully loaded kitchen, people react like it’s a declaration of war.

Time-out. Breathe. Rethink.

My argument is simple; the ‘great’ in the 'great kitchen' is mostly myth. For generations we’ve lived under a cultural spell. Home-cooked food is sacred, the kitchen is holy, the ladle is a moral compass. Cute. Also outdated.

We spend obscene amounts of time, effort, money, energy, and square footage maintaining a thousand miniature restaurants inside a thousand homes. Every Indian household is basically running a food startup with no investors, no exit plan, and an unpaid CEO expected to smile through it all. And for what? To argue daily about salt levels?

Let’s not pretend families don’t already fight over sambar thickness. So yes, there will be fights in community kitchens. But at least the arguments will be efficient. Centralised. Scalable. And every neighbourhood has that one aunty who makes chicken curry so divine it should be taxed. If she’s already the goddess of chicken curry, why restrict her to her 2bhk? Talent-hoarding inside four walls is stupidity. Let her rule the kingdom. If she loves cooking and everyone loves her cooking, why not turn talent into a neighbourhood treasure instead of a private blessing? Let the gifted cooks cook. Let the rest of us live.

But where food is religion, I’m calling for atheism. And cultural atheism doesn’t work like a light switch. People don’t cling to kitchens out of logic. They cling out of identity. Telling people to shed food religion is like telling Bengal to stop worshipping fish. Evolution laughs. People admit "Aunty cooks best” only as long as the admission costs them nothing. The moment aunty gets paid, suddenly her curry is okay-ish only. Egos are the real masala. My argument asks people to surrender ego, tradition, and the illusion that my kitchen is my identity. Possible. But generational. And aunty monetising her genius works only until she gets overworked, underpaid, micromanaged, unionised, sick, or just fed up of twenty people telling her, “Salt swalpa kami haki.” Capitalism is not harmony. Still, I stand by the point; if people already fight about food, centralising the battlefield doesn’t make it worse. It just makes it efficient.

Culturally? 'Mother knows best' is the biggest bureaucratic system in India. Zero transparency. Zero audit. Zero appeal. Infinite emotional authority. A community kitchen threatens that emotional monopoly. We trust others with national security, roads, medical care, trains, banks, schools, flights. But dal? No, dal requires complete personal sovereignty. But this 'control' argument is weak. People already outsource cooking. Just expensively. And inefficiently. If you can happily pay ₹300 for a bowl of ramen made by a stranger, this isn’t about trust. It’s about habit. Habits evolve.

That said, community kitchens can become BDA offices with ladles. Under-monitored. Understaffed. Committee-controlled. Budget-starved. Politics-prone. Yes, they need systems, planning, staff, menus, hygiene checks. That’s called jobs. It’s also called better design, resource efficiency, and growing up as a society. If we can run airports, we can run a neighbourhood kitchen. If we can coordinate 15 relatives for a wedding lunch, we can coordinate 150 residents for weekday meals. Of course complex systems invite corruption, free riders, and friction. The same people who fight over parking spots will fight over roti sizes. Society isn’t a TED talk. But that doesn’t mean we stop trying to behave like one. We don’t get to retire from society and eat in silos. Giving up on collective solutions because people are irritating is exactly how we stay irritating. Complexity isn’t a cue to retreat. It’s an invitation to participate.

Hygiene? Another convenient excuse. Home kitchens feel cleaner because you know them. Community kitchens look cleaner because they must be. We trust schools, hospitals, airlines, fine-dining restaurants. All centralised systems. But centralising food suddenly turns us into philosophers of risk? Please. A well-run community kitchen will out-hygiene 90% of Indian homes. And that’s me being polite.

True, decentralised risk means food poisoning currently hits one family, not an entire community. Central kitchens can fail spectacularly if protocols slip. But we trust tap water with microplastics, street vada pav fried in oil older than their landlords, and pani puri that’s basically a bacteria lottery. Collective food is where we draw the line? Yes, community kitchens centralise risk. They also centralise oversight, expertise, accountability. So the point stands: home kitchens offer the illusion of safety, not the guarantee of it.

But food is memory! Absolutely. Sunday barbecues, weekend dosa rituals, festival feasts. They’ll still exist. Emotions don’t require daily chopping to survive. Let’s keep rituals, lose drudgery. Nobody nostalgically whispers, “Remember that Tuesday afternoon when I cut 19 beans? Pure magic.” But yes, everyday ordinariness creates emotional texture. Tuesday rasam is nostalgia; Sunday barbecue is novelty. Both matter. My argument is simple; memory is not mandate. Cook when you want to create. Not because you’re trapped. This reframes culture quietly. A revolution disguised as practicality.

And you can still make midnight Maggi. Nobody is banning kettles. We just don’t need a granite countertop, three burners, a chimney, four cupboards, and a giant gas cylinder for noodles. Let’s stop romanticising inefficiency.

Some say kitchens aren’t just stoves. They’re power structures. Safe spaces. Zones of autonomy. Fair. Shrinking kitchens to pantries can feel like shrinking someone’s only slice of freedom, especially in homes where the kitchen doubles as the only private room a person can truly claim. But that’s exactly the tragedy I want to underline. A kitchen shouldn’t have to be a sanctuary. The fact that it is one for so many says more about our domestic hierarchies than about the sanctity of food. Redesigning kitchens isn’t cultural collapse. It’s an invitation to build lives where safety and autonomy don’t come tied to a gas stove.

Then comes the job-loss argument. Domestic kitchen work isn’t a sacred sector. It’s a stopgap created by inequality. Community kitchens can offer formal employment, safer workplaces, better wages, and skill development, while freeing millions of women from unpaid daily labour. A sudden shift will hit domestic staff, small cooks, tiffin services, vendors. Yes, it’s a structural jolt. But tech never kills jobs; it mutates them. Home cooks become menu planners, sous chefs, procurement heads, nutrition officers, logistics supervisors. One person cooking for fifty instead of one, that’s scale. Efficiency. Dignity.

Now, factory-made food. Yes, I said it. We need to unshackle ourselves from the idea that food must be handcrafted daily to matter.

Food is stories! True. But we can create better stories. Ones not built on unpaid labour. And nothing stops you from growing a mango tree with the time you save. A richer story than 'I cooked lunch for 40 years.' Of course, humans form memories around peeling oranges, waiting for tea, stealing pakodas, smelling tadka, hearing pressure cookers. We’re wired for natural food. Expecting Soylent to replace that is like expecting a summary to replace a novel.

Biology is complex. Great, so let’s innovate faster. We already brew synthetic insulin, grow lab meat, build plant proteins, engineer supplements. We’re not replacing food. We’re augmenting it. Stop worshipping the farm as the only food source. Start imagining alternatives. Trust issues? We don’t trust monsoons either. Depending on weather is medieval. Factories are predictable. Competition makes them safer and cheaper. Yes, factory failures are systemic, unlike farms where risk is distributed. That’s not superstition; it’s risk logic. But humans mistrust everything at first. Elevators, pressure cookers, vaccines, UPI, AI. Then they adapt. And inequality? Factory food can reduce it. Standardised nutrition means kids get essential vitamins, patients get customised diets, elderly get easier meals, labourers get affordable nourishment, women get time, busy people get health. That’s dignity. Yes, standardisation can centralise wealth without strong regulation. But iodised salt, fortified milk, and packaged atta transformed India. Factory food can do the same if done right.

So why aren’t we already doing this? Because our culture is emotionally welded to the kitchen as the heart of the home. Beautiful idea. Terrible economics. We don’t need to demolish kitchens. Just downgrade them. We don’t need to abolish home cooking. Just liberate it. We don’t need to abandon tradition. Just stop being enslaved by it.

The future of Indian living is simple. Community kitchens for everyday nourishment. Home kitchens for joy. Factory food for precision. This isn’t loss of culture. It’s evolution. And evolution begins with one bold question. Why are we still doing things the old way when the world is begging us to be smarter?

PS:
This whole rant was triggered by the sheer awe I felt seeing my friend’s gorgeous new home. Especially that kitchen and the gazebo that looks like it belongs in a lifestyle magazine. None of this is a critique of her place; I love it, I admire it, and I fully intend to keep visiting and pretending it’s my weekend retreat. This is just my brain spiraling into one of its philosophical rants. She’ll get it. And she’ll laugh.

When Scorpions Croon

I still remember those days of making tapes. The ritual, the reverence, the absurd seriousness of it all. It wasn’t just curation; it was consecration. Every track chosen with the intensity of a lovelorn monk. The dubbing was a pilgrimage. I’d cycle to Pappu’s place because he owned that legendary Kenwood deck. My humble Philips machine always added this faint grainy hiss, a background snowfall. But for her tape, it had to be perfect. Only Pappu’s Kenwood could deliver that holy fidelity.

And then the order. Ah, the order! You could start with More Than Words, sure. But you could never follow up Bryan Adams with Extreme. Once you’ve sung Everything I Do to her, you can’t just casually slide into another guy crooning. And Sinead O’Connor? She was always the final word. Nothing, absolutely nothing, compared to her as a sign-off.

Then came the cover art. The inlay card. My obsessive little flourishes. Looking back, it was all so… tender. So embarrassingly earnest. Almost devotional. Not exactly the macho persona I thought I was projecting. No wonder I never scored, I was basically a thesis on contradictions, wrapped in teenage bravado and scented erasers.

And yet, here I am again. Building another playlist. Only this time, it’s not for anyone else. It’s an apology to myself, for not discovering the Scorpions more deeply, earlier. A tribute long overdue.

This one begins with my heartbreak in stereo, Still Loving You. It’s the emotional tectonic plate on which the rest rests. Then comes the road-weariness of Always Somewhere, that ache of missing someone so much the previous song keeps buzzing in your bones. The dreamy, late-night float of Send Me an Angel follows. Perfect for my 2am autopsies of the soul. And then Holiday, shy at first, but surely blooming into that classic Scorpions emotional eruption. When the Smoke Is Going Down is my own personal end-of-the-night melancholy. The moment you walk away knowing you shouldn’t have lost her. Lonely Nights? That’s just me, fully exposed. You and I is my most earnest self, unguarded and hopeful. And the powerhouse of the list, the zero-subtlety, full-heart blast of Believe in Love. Then the quiet, fragile introspection of Maybe I, Maybe You. And finally, the grand sign-off. Wind of Change. The eternal whistle of nostalgia, rebellion, and hope all braided into one aching breeze.

This playlist hits me square in the solar plexus. It wraps raw emotion in stadium-sized riffs, and Klaus Meine bleeds into every line. That crack in his voice making it feel like the words are mine. Like I am the unseen protagonist of some private music video, reliving each heartbreak twice… and yet somehow still believing tomorrow might be better. It’s an emotional monsoon, bruised sincerity under distortion, longing under power chords, hope carried on a breeze.

When Scorpions croon, I crumble. And rebuild.

Last act of a beautiful trail?

Kaveri Trail Marathon. A 21 km run along a shy little tributary of the Kaveri, flanked by lush green fields around Ranganathittu, birds chirping their gossip in the distance, village charm in full display… honestly, who wouldn’t fall in love? They call it India’s oldest trail marathon. But alas, I’ve arrived fashionably... no, foolishly late to the party.

It was only last year that I took up running seriously, and KTM was one of my early 10Ks. Of course it hooked me clean. This year I wanted to go the whole hog. I’d even signed up for the full. But the universe had other plans: a few rough months, lousy health, and eventually a meek request to downgrade to the half. I was gutted. Till I discovered that the full is just double loop of the same trail. That softened the heartbreak a bit. I wasn’t missing any of the famed course after all.

The first 5 km is pure magic. The 10K is actually a round trip through this little paradise. But the following 5.5 km... Sigh. Dusty gravel. Construction debris. A war-zone cosplay where the only soldiers are cement bags and half-built houses. The rustic charm surrenders to chaos, and the country vibe dies somewhere under a heap of brick and mortar.

Honestly, I should have run this at least three years ago. But I only laced up last year. And now the trail is paying the price of 'progress.' NEB really needs to find a new route if they want to preserve what made KTM special. Because next year? It’ll be worse. I can’t help but cringe at the sad, predictable picture this landscape is spiralling into. Narrow lanes winding through jarringly ugly buildings that barely qualify as village homes. Laundry drooping across cramped balconies of tasteless two-storeyed boxes. The inevitable stray dogs. Cows loitering on concrete roads because their grazing fields now host more of those obnoxious constructions. And dung everywhere, like a final flourish of defeat. And worst of all, impatient two-wheelers hauling sacks of farm produce, muttering curses at runners intruding on 'their' road.

Call me skeptical. Yes, absolutely. I’ve seen enough places slide into the same fate to have earned my cynicism. This is exactly what happens when a beautiful trail is swallowed by the unstoppable hunger of construction. And unfortunately, I’ve arrived just in time to witness the last act.

Funny thing, just earlier, on the drive to Mysore, kid and I had been talking about why residential streets abroad look so beautiful while most populated areas here look battered and filthy. I gave a lame diplomatic excuse about postcard angles and curated views. Truth is, I don’t really buy that myself. We lack taste. When we build, we don’t build into the surroundings. We bulldoze over them. No syncing. No harmony. Not even a token attempt. We are, without apology or shame, selfish in our distaste for anything resembling aesthetic restraint.

Winged runner

It was around the 19 km mark that she overtook me. I remembered those legs instantly. From Goa Ultra. On her thick, powerful calves, she has a pair of wings tattooed, one on each leg. And as she ran, she didn’t just run. She flew. Her tattoo wings seemed to flap with every stride. And she was fast. In Goa, she had left me far behind; I only got a fleeting glimpse of those brilliant winged calves. But today, already in the final stretch, I was determined to keep up with this incredible runner.

Those wings were too strong for me. They flapped relentlessly, and soon she had a 50–60metres lead. But I kept my eyes glued to those legs. Watching those wings fly by the Kaveri stream was its own kind of inspiration. I dug deep in the final kilometre, went all out, and when we finished she was barely ten metres ahead.

At the finish line, kid was waiting. He’d finished his 10K second in his age category. The euphoria distracted me from my enchantment with her winged calves. But there will be more runs. And I’ll keep an eye out for those tattooed legs. She’s truly an inspiring runner. One I’d love to meet and greet someday.

Postscript: The Substance of the Surge

Atm (that’s just what I call her) wrote back with a brilliant comment unpacking what this 'leftward limp back' really looks like. From Mamdani’s radical, grassroots-level socialism in New York to Connolly’s symbolic but significant win in Ireland, Orsi’s pragmatic moderation in Uruguay, and the reawakening of Die Linke under Schwerdtner and Van Aken. The title above is lifted from her note, which also made me realise how little I actually knew about the specifics. What struck me most was how local and contextual each of these victories is. Not one ideology marching in step, but small, separate rebellions against the same rot.

Another friend (an intellectual who wouldn’t admit that he is one) wrote to say that socialism is just a Ponzi scheme, and that dividing politicians into left and right is meaningless. Both of them, and both of their points, of course, matter. Because they both underline the same truth. That there’s no clean segregation between left and right in practice.
Governance isn’t theory.
It’s messy math.
The state and the market serve different gods. A business must chase profit to stay alive. The state must chase welfare to stay humane. Roughly a third of any population will always depend on the state’s care. The sick, the old, our children,  and the struggling. They’ll never show up in anyone’s profit column. That’s why certain services must exist without any ambition on the balance sheet. In that sense, sustainability depends not on erasing profit, but on letting it fund what profit alone will never provide.

I can’t comment much on the New York or European scenes. I am not aware enough. But here at home, the contrast is visible every day. It makes little economic sense for the government to run KSRTC. Absolutely true. But when the same KSRTC offers free rides to cancer patients for treatment, that, right there, is the state at its most meaningful.

So in my view, this 'surge' isn’t about replacing capitalism with socialism. It’s about balancing the order, so that both can co-exist. One to generate. The other to distribute. And the health of any society lies in how honestly we can keep that balance. In the end, the revolution, it seems, begins in the fine print of the budget.

An another thing unrelated to the content but very much about my writing, my smart friend pointed out my tendency to editorialise. "Like a coach" is how he put it. Fair. I should watch that. I hate sermons myself, and when my readers actually mean a lot to me, I really can’t afford to be a bore. Sorry, folks. Next one onwards, I promise to behave.

Mamzady Moment & Other Memes

For the past many years, the world’s been spiralling down a slippery slide rightwards and I always had this cynical thought, that we’re in free fall, accelerating straight into a political doomsday. Every headline felt like a punch in the gut. From our terrible Modi thundering in India to his petty phrend Trump blabbering in the USA. From Netanyahu bombing his way through Israel to Meloni grinning hers through Italy. With Bolsonaro shouting down Brazil and Wilders whispering hate in the Netherlands, this world was rotting right. And I was just here. Watching. Brooding. Sulking.

Helpless.

Then, in an entirely unrelated episode, I had to attend our monthly review meeting at work. Having been on medical leave for almost the whole month, I had nothing to show. Nothing to report. Nothing to present. But I had this one slide prepared anyway.

Just one.

Arnold Schwarzenegger.

I AM BACK.

Terminator style.

At the time, it was just a joke to lighten the room. But this morning, skimming through the news, I smiled.

Because that meme… fits the world too.

It had started earlier this week with the Mamzady moment. Zohran Mamdani’s shock surge to mayor-elect in New York, a shot of progressive adrenaline the algorithms couldn’t help but amplify. Maybe social media’s blowing it up. Or maybe not (Truly, social media is the new mass media now, whether the old guards like it or not). Either way, it shows something: in this digital din, the people can still make themselves heard.

And it wasn’t just one noisy win. There’s Catherine Connolly in Ireland, the president-elect after a landslide. And Claudia Sheinbaum’s historic rise in Mexico (a left-leaning tradition that’s had mixed results, sure. But still a statement). Also, we have Starmer in the UK (whose 'left' often feels like centre-right in a better suit) and Yamandu Orsi in Uruguay. And in Germany voices like Ines Schwerdtner and Jan van Aken are gathering wind. Then of course, back home in Kerala, Pinarayi is still holding ground. All small but real pushes back from the drift.

So maybe, just maybe, all is not lost. The world’s limping back. Crawling. Standing up after the fall.

And we’re posting our own meme now.

Quintessential Arnold.

I’LL BE BACK!

Truly, Terminator style.

It’s healing time.

The world is crawling back from the rotten right, one meme at a time.

But let’s not get drunk on optimism. For history doesn’t do clean dichotomies. It only repeats in clever disguises. Too much socialism bleeds into fascism dressed in poetic robes, and every revolution risks birthing its own dictator. So let’s keep our game sharp.

To be a true working-class hero, one ought to be a worker first. 

Not a slogan. Not a statue. Not a savior.