Jack Nicholson was brilliant in it. Do you remember the famous dialogue? “You can’t handle the truth son.”

I don’t know why I mentioned this tit-bit. The story of my kitchen has nothing to do with this movie, the exception being the keyword, HANDLE. 🙂

 

There was a time when there were no handles on my kitchen cupboards. March 2020 changed lives drastically, lockdown was imposed on us due to COVID-19 as coronavirus had arrived in the country and was wrecking havoc. We were renovating our house and were in the final stages of redoing our kitchen. The old  cream colored cabinets had been taken down and new shiny/aquamarine ones interspersed with a few butter coloured ones were installed. The kitchen had taken on a new look and Persona with these changes and the only thing left to do was to put in the handles on the cabinets’ doors.

The carpenter who had been renovating the kitchen stopped coming to work due to the social distancing norms and the lockdown. The consequence was that our cupboards were left handle-less. The carpenter was more worried about us then we were. We assured him that we would survive the handle-less state of our cupboards for as long as the lockdown was in place.

So from March to June,  we were living without handles on the kitchen cupboards. We had developed a system of operating the drawers and cupboards without handles. It was actually pretty cool, smooth and comfortable.

Life became interesting. My brilliant daughter put in a few cardboard square pieces in the drawers and pulled on these to open the new cupboards.The doors of the cupboards on the lower-level where a breeze to maneuver. One foot wedged under the door, and a flick of the toe was what it took to open them. This was possible because of the small gap between the base of the door and the floor.

One set of doors was too stubborn as there wasn’t any gap under it. Opening it was a challenge. No matter how many times I stuck a cardboard peace under its doors, the doors stuck and it was a pain to open it. I refrained from putting things of every day use there and avoided opening it and made do without some of the utensils stored inside for the time being.

My life took an about-turn and the cupboards and drawers were never the same again. Gone were the days of flicking the toe and opening a cupboard. Discarded were the reliable cardboard pieces which had helped pull the drawers and cupboards open.

The carpenter remarked, “I knew only you people could manage to live without handles on the drawers and cupboards for three whole months.”

I am not sure whether it was a compliment or a taunt. But I always see the glass as half full and look for the silver lining in the cloud. So I thanked him before sending him off.

Every survival kit should include a sense of humor. ~Author unknown

Sulekha Rawat