Experiencing Life in the Smallest of Actions

 

I am hardly one who knows her way around the kitchen but last December, I learnt to churn out an edible version of Devil's curry, a dish fondly loved in the Eurasian circle. Known also as Curry Debal in Kristang, the language of the Portuguese Eurasians, the dish is often served one or two days after Christmas using leftovers from the Christmas meal. Other than the thrill of learning to master a dish with such lovely environmentally-friendly roots,  learning the intricacies of each step involved in making this exotic dish was simply fascinating. From learning to remove the seeds of the dried chilli (so that the curry will not be too mind-blowing hotter than it already is), to figuring out when the curry is ready (if it sticks to the back of the cooking spoon), and grasping the epiphany that one adds in vegetable stock cube only at the end (so that I can see how tasty the dish already is and hence how much of the cube to add to let it display its prowess). Amidst the blurriness stemming from my clumsiness in the kitchen, I suddenly felt so empowered -- it was almost as if while trying to master Devil's Curry, I had simultaneously mastered several other dishes.

It was then that I realised I finally got around to figure out what Irish novelist and poet James Joyce already did a century ago when he said his famous quote:

"In the particular is contained the universal"

When asked why he always wrote about Dublin, Ireland where he was born, James Joyce said “...because if I can get to the heart of Dublin, I can get to the heart of all the cities of the world. In the particular is contained the universal." When you master one thing really really well, you may already have the cosmos under your belt. 

And so it was that in delving deeply into the learning of a specific dish in Devil's curry, I came to grasp the quintessential basic food preparation skills of cutting, dicing and blending. What a hope-inspiring revelation it is for me that I too can one day churn out many other edible dishes for my loved ones. 

Last December too, W and I signed up for a community tour with local tour guide and social activist Cai Yingzhou to understand more about the neighbourhood of Geylang -- and got more than what we bargained for. Three hours into the tour conducted in the wee hours of the morning, it soon became apparent that this is someone driven not just by his desire to have to have more people understand the charms of the neighbourhood where he lived. This was Yingzhou's way of helping his fellow Singaporeans unpack and understand the social issues our country is facing, by dissecting the microcosm of the one neighbourhood he grew up in. He was changing mindsets, one story at a time. 

This Lunar New Year, I finally finished the delicious read "Inner Engineering: A Yogi's Guide to Joy", written by Indian yogi Sadhguru. In the book, he wrote that by paying more attention and being more aware, we can enhance our perception and hence our "ability to receive life". 

May we all get to the heart of experiencing life in its fullest form, from the smallest actions in our everyday lives. Happy Lunar New Year!