Does a survival kit include cooking?

Constant rumbling in the background with familiar utensil clatters, followed by aromatic smells filling the air. All this and more constitutes our fun family cooking adventure reserved for every alternate weekends, and where would I be in all this mayhem? Somewhere far away from the kitchen, tucked in some corner dodging everybody’s vision hoping to be unnoticed lest I am forced to join in. This so, speaks about my profound love for cooking!

“Cooking? Nah I’ll pass. I’d rather stay hungry.” Everybody knows that food, clothes and shelter are the three basic necessities of life, but nobody mentioned that a certain ‘cooking’ is involved for consumption of one of those necessities. Oh my, as far as I can decipher, cooking is one eternal tedious task that sucks the fun out of an everyday normal life.

There are quite a few sayings dedicated to the art/science of cooking (I can hardly tell the difference).  Most of these wise sayings underline the fact that cooking is an absolute necessity if one wants to lead an independent life. Knowing how to handle yourself in the kitchen can help you go a long way to fend for yourself without any hassles.

I often ponder, is it absolutely necessary to be equipped with culinary skills? I would look at cooking as something similar to a warrior entering a war field. I perceive it as a struggling endeavour to meet one’s daily needs. But isn’t it true, that we live in a world where digitization and development has borne the ultimate habit, known as ‘laziness.’ Literally anything and everything can be owned by a person and what more, you can own them at your very doorstep. So why is food an exception? Is it possible that a person can live on takeaways and home delivered food till eternity? You can even choose from different variants and cuisines to satiate your palate on any given day. Then why should we go through the cumbersome process of cooking? The answer for that would probably come from a non-lazy sensible person (not me). I hereby stand as an interpreter for that segment to give a different understanding to the world of cooking. There is something called money management and more importantly the dangerous world where everybody are prone to health hazards (not saying the latter part is scientifically proved, but let’s just abide by some previous researches). Besides, a majority part of your life is going to be spent eating healthy basic food; you are definitely not going on a binge eating spree on those delicious steaks for the rest of your lives. Hence, you are definitely not planning to spend money on buying basic food when all you need is to learn how to cook the basics! This is certainly going to come in handy when you are all of a sudden displaced into another continent where your first tool to survive is by cooking. You obviously need time to figure out some decent food joint, until then try cooking.

I may support the act of cooking, whereas in reality I despise cooking (No that does not make me a hypocrite). If given a chance I would stay hungry (and foolish) rather than bring my bottom into the kitchen and try my hand at dishing out something for myself. But, this is definitely not stopping me from contemplating the essentials of cooking as a survival tool and so should all of you.