Bhima and the Clean Kitchen

A radiant youth of immense strength and beauty, possessing the magnificent aura of his father Vayu Deva dwelling in the foothills of Mount Meru and boundless might second only to his older brother Lord Hanuman, approaches King Virata of the Matsya kingdom and stands before him with a cooking ladle in one hand and a chef knife in another, illuminating the ambience by his splendor like the sun illuminating the world.  He is none other than the powerful Pandava prince Bhimasena, disguised as the cook Ballava as decreed by his brother Yudishthira against the backdrop of Agyatavasa, their 13th year of exile to be spent incognito.  King Virata astonished by Bhima's magnificence says, "O mighty gentleman, who art thou?  What doth thee seeketh, pray tell me!"

With the poise befitting a Kshatriya price but with the humility befitting his disguise, Bhima replies: "O righteous king!  I am a cook by name Ballava.  I am artful in preparing delicious dishes and seeketh employment in thy royal kitchen."

The surprised King states: "O Ballava, it does not seem like cooking is thy office.  Thou shineth in my presence like a thousand suns as if it be true thou were a mighty warrior prince!"

Upon hearing this, Bhima responds thusly: "Do not doubteth me, O King of Kings, as the great King Yudishthira himself has relished my food.  Whilst it be true there is no one equal to me in strength, pray be assured that I am thy cook and servant first."

"Very well!", says King Virata, "I appointeth thee as the superintendent of the royal kitchen.  Just be sure to weareth FDA approved latex free vinyl gloves whilst cooking!"

Praveen Kumar Sobti as Ballava the cook in BR Chopra's Mahabharat

Had the Mahabharata happened in the Kali Yuga instead of the Dwapara Yuga, this scene from the Virata Parva might have very well unfolded in this manner.  If you have perused some of the comments under cooking videos on Facebook these days, you wouldn't disagree with me, for there seems to be an unreasonable profusion of the hygiene police trolling the comment space of pretty much every cooking video and declaring that they wouldn't touch the food prepared in the video with a ten foot pole because the chef in question hadn't worn gloves.  To think that there is an entire population of trolls that has made it its vocation to textually articulate its collective abhorrence of gloveless cooks!  I mean, what kind of a preposterous fixation is this?  

Coming back to the Virata Parva, it is said that the ill-tempered Sage Durvasa once paid a surprise visit to the Matsya kingdom when Bhima alias Ballava was employed as a cook there.  Being unable to prepare a grand meal to appease the great Sage on such short notice, Bhima decided to improvise with whatever he had.  He threw together little bits of vegetables and prepared a new dish that became an instant hit.  This new dish was christened Avial.  Now imagine if the dangerous Sage Durvasa, the one who had cursed Goddess Saraswati Herself to become a river and Lord Indra Himself to lose all his powers, had somehow discovered that Bhima had not worn gloves that day while preparing the Avial, we wouldn't be celebrating this dish and serving it at weddings today!