Once upon a time, long long ago, there lived a maiden who felt her  kitchen needed remodelling.  Far from a fairytale ? Read on, it  ends like one too!

This wasn’t a decision taken on whim. It was  something I had been deliberating for quite some time. I needed a new kitchen. The old one just didn’t work. My husband wasn’t convinced  and the fact that I hardly ever cook made a very strong argument .I absolutely detest routine cooking. Making  roti after roti, all of the same shape and size goes against the fabric of my being . But every now and then, I like to play chef and cook something exotic and on such occasions I feel  that the kitchen should look it’s part.

It took some work but I finally got my husband on board. And after some  research  we settled for a  firm  suitably named ‘Dream kitchens’. They assured us that theirs  was a fifteen day job and they could start as soon as the masonry work was done. It sounded simple. A months job by rough estimates . The first step was the demolition of the  existing kitchen and pantry . This was done in two days by a couple of able bodied men, who appeared to be Shiv- bhakts.   I had a good feeling even though there were two gaping holes in my living room , one the gateway to my long cherished kitchen and the other the exit from the old one. We were making good progress  . I naively believed that all that stood between me and my new modular kitchen   was a bit of masonry work, some retiling and  some new counter tops.  I had always known that the construction sector in India  was a disorganised one but I was to learn its true meaning. My nightmare had begun!

It was only when we were in the thick of things that I realized that there are masons and then there are masons.  There was the lowly kacha plaster mason who could only do work which would be finally hidden ,  There was the stone and tile setter who couldn’t be caught dead doing kacha plaster and then there was the senior mason who finished walls with a flourish. None of them were interchangeable. But before that we needed an electrician to lay  new lines,  a plumber to give additional tap connections, a new gas pipe had to be installed. Co-ordinating the various branches of engineering was a uphill task.The electrician and plumber became the people I  most frequently called and my phone automatically labeled them as my favourites. Not that smart,  is it ?? …..dumb phone…dumb phone!

I learnt that there are the contract killers, who are quick but  not meticulous and then there are the bleeders , who labour with love and will do a decent  job,  but you may not live long enough to see it done . I noticed  that the most common excuse of not showing up for work by daily wagers was a death in the family.  Someone suggested I maintain a death register , not let anyone die twice. At one point I was deliberating whether  I should get a Amar Jawan Jyoti type of  memorial  constructed in my garden, ‘For all those who lost their life for the cause.. 

I had turned my under-utilised gym into a temporary kitchen and had stocked up on frozen and easy to cook food. Slowly, like a slum which crops up near a construction site we got used to this make shift arrangement and  started cooking elaborate meals. We even made a year’s supply of tomato purée ! We were truly prepared  for the long haul.

Meanwhile, with the insight I had gained, I developed an alternate theory on how  the Taj Mahal was built.  An excited Shah Jahan brings the plan of the monument of love to a very pregnant and irritable Mumtaz.  One look at it , “twenty thousand workers over twenty years ! ” and she says, “over my dead body”. The rest is , well, history !!

To cut a very long story short it took more than three months to shift back into the new  but still incomplete kitchen. I no longer cared that the  chimney duct should be  hidden inside a wooden raft replete with L.E.D lights and that the floor should have a final round of polish! Over the next couple of months those final touches were added and I pledged never to indulge in such recklessness again…………  And we live happily ever after!

(published in the Hindustan Times on 21/1/2015)