Posted on by TejaMH

The ‘Upma’ker

Disclaimer: The below stunts are performed by an unprofessional cook. Try this at home only under the supervision of a younger sibling.

­Ingredients

  1. Your Mom left for a long holiday to her hometown.
  2. You are hungry as hell.
  3. Salary is still a week away and you ran out of food coupons/offers.
  4. A lot of courage and bravery. (most important ingredient, if you don’t have this don’t proceed)
  5. A younger sibling. ( if you don’t have one, I am sorry for you !).
  6. A couple of holidays in your hand (just incase something goes wrong!)
  7. Some miscellaneous items like ravva, oil, onion, Kaju, etc etc.

Procedure

Fill your empty hungry stomach with a lot of ingredient#4 and go to the kitchen(If you don’t know where your kitchen is, you’ll just have to figure it yourself. Sorry, google won’t help you here. It is often the place where your Mom shouts and makes you fill the water bottles to be put in the fridge ). Whenever you lose any courage at any point of the time from now, remember to re read the ingredient list (especially items #1,#2 and #3).

Now comes the most crucial part, what to do?

Simple, you just have to recollect all the things which you know about cooking( which might be basically nothing). Well in this case, since generally cooking will be done in a vessel, let’s not try different and go with the same. So after this, we need to figure out, from the items in the kitchen, which things are exactly used for cooking and which things are not used (non edible. Sometimes, mom might keep a cockroach repellant handy in the shelf. Look out!).

The chief ingredient for the recipe is ravva and that’s the challenge. A lot of things in the kitchen look like ravva and am so sorry if your mom doesn’t bother labeling the bottles. Now if you are an engineering student, the joke is on you. By now you must be knowing already, how good you are at making decisions because you decided to do engineering. So don’t even try to use your brain much and call your mom and find out which one of these ‘rava lookalikes’ is the real upma rava. (Oh by the way, before calling up, prepare yourself mentally to listen to another good set of ‘gyan (aka gaali) vachan’. Poor mom thinks kitchen is gonna blow up)

With the confidence of figuring out the rava, put the vessel on the stove. Add few ml oil and a litre of water. Dump all the stuff whatever you like to eat in that vessel and start stirring. Now, this is your moment of pride and don’t miss it even a tiny bit. Just own it and start feeling like you are a professional cook while you stir the contents.

Keep stirring until the thing in that vessel looks like “ it can’t get worse than this” and switch off the stove (if you had switched it on in the first place; else doesn’t matter now. No wonder the cooking programs in the tv mention ‘now switch on the stove’. Never thought it was so important until now). Viola! The so-called cooking is over and the upma is ready.

The final act is the most interesting. Thanks to your parents, you have a younger sibling who will now be your ‘lab rat’. So wake him/her up( he/she probably must be sleeping or you made sure he/she didn’t see your cooking adventure or else he/she will never even try to sniff this). Now when you take the plate of upma to your sbiling, make sure you don’t show any love towards your sibling and ask him/her to eat it in a very casual way. (He/she will get the hint and will not believe if you were suddenly acting nice. Remember, you just have only one sibling, only one tester!)

Act natural, make sure he/she eats. Wait for 60 minutes( just to be safe). If everything is well, then you also eat it. Still, if something happens anyway, you have a holiday the next day to drain it down the toilet. The other option is to just dump everything in the dustbin and order a Swiggy.

– Teja M.H(24th June 2018)

Guest Post Contributor for
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53 Replies to “The ‘Upma’ker”

  1. Teja, This is a wonderful post. I’m sure laughter would be tough to control for anyone who reads this. Thanks for being my first guest post contributor and for choosing this blog for sharing your work. Keem them coming!

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  6. And if u are in school and point #1,2,3 are valid with an added difficulty of no sibling…. Try frying a papad…
    — yes ‘switch on’ the stove…
    — put papad on it… It will catch fire….throw it out of nearest window…
    — realize that there is frying pot pre-filled with oil… Keep it on stove …soak papad in oil and wait
    — realize only tempers flare quickly rest all materials have boiling point…. alas ur in school and still many years away from being chemical engineer…
    — throw the oil soaked papad out of same window…
    — ‘switch off’ stove …clean the kitchen counter and go to the good neighbor…. And eat food….
    — now when Mom catches the burnt papad below window…. Remember crows are best bet to lay blame on…

    Teja….Thank You for bringing back memories….great post

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    1. Abhishek, thanks for sharing your ‘interesting’ memories! Will I be seeing you soon as my guest post contributor? I’m looking forward to it.

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  7. Teja, no need to give compliments for your writings , I always love to read your blogs and i hope in future u will be a famous author, my best wishes are always with you.

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  11. Hey I can’t laugh anymore. It’s so nostalgic to taste. Wah wat a creative writing though. You have a great talent man.
    By the way your rava upma is increasing my appetite 🤤😋😋
    Pull out some tym and pen more n more like this.

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  12. It’s one crazy post I’ve ever came across. Awesome write up hari. But I have once concern!! 😛 Instead of being sorry about single child’ , they can have few cousins or friends around them, to try this Upamker! 😂

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  13. Great Teja, I like your style of writing.
    You’ve got an awesome sense of humor!
    BTW you are really courageous to try such stunts @home. 😛
    And also I pity your brother (as am the younger one in my family) 😉

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  15. Omg! This one is crazy. Utterly hilarious. Lab rat. Bechara brother 😂😂
    I don’t know from where on earth yu bring out such hilariously innovative thoughts. Just awesome man. Keep entertaining people.
    Upmaker story is probably your “bug” ka baap 👏🏼👏🏼

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  21. Great post, Teja and this is a situation one would face at some point or the other and we don’t realize the importance of it untill you face it. The way you’ve added food to humor is awesome and very much appreciable. Keep up the good humor and look forward to see some more from you soon!!

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  26. Awesome Teja. I enjoyed reading this. I have imagined each and every line you wrote (especialy cockroach repellent and lab rat lines are still hitting my mind 😀). Keep posting more.

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  27. Teja.. this one is a must read!
    A real scenario though.!!. A camoflauge of comedy and an awesome way of expressing the beauty of being alone and cooking on our own. And that too Upma 😅 easy but a tedious one for every individual😅

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  28. Hey Iam there! Y dont u give me the fortune of tasting ur Upma.? If Upma would come to know that someone has written a beautiful post on Upma am sure it would happily hug u for ur wonderful description. I mean it…Cheers:)

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  31. I’ve always been a fan of your write ups and I must tell you Hari, I love the way you make sure the element of fun has its perfect place in ur posts. Not sure how you get ideas like calling actual ingredients miscellaneous, having a couple of holidays in hand, and making ur sibling a lab rat. Lol!!😜 Every bit and piece of how you wrote it makes perfect sense😄. Not to miss the hilarious decision making part on engineers, it was a good one.😂 As always, keep writing bro, u’ve a long way to go.🙂

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  32. Idi chadivi telsukondira abbailu/ammailu… Wat not to do while preparing UPMA😝
    Seriously.. Thanking god n mah parents for not making me THE younger one. 😉
    Keep going oi.. I’m vid u to learn wat NOT TO DO in kitchen.. God bless the poor lil’ one🤗 vid more stronger digestive system 😂🤣

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