All Hail the ONION

Those of you who know me will know that I have a passion for eating onions…and those of u who didn’t know …now u do..
Unfortunately, not many others in my family share this devotion to what I consider the king of all vegetables (Brinjal was dethroned long back as far as I am concerned). Hence it is very rarely that I get to fulfill my desire of eating the above mentioned vegetable.
On occasions when I am fortunate enough to prevail upon the others to make onions, the duty of cutting this most sacred of all vegetables is thrust upon my shoulders…
Lest u underestimate the magnitude of the task facing me, let me tell u all a little story….
There were once a lady bought 3 vegetables from the market, a potato, a tomato, and an onion. The first day she cut up the potato and ate it…both the tomato and the onion cried at the loss of their friend Mr. Potato…
The next day the lady made tomato and the onion cried for its demise.
That night, the onion kept on crying at night…god taking pity on the onion came and asked it…”What are u crying for Onion”…Onion replied “When my friends died, they both had someone to cry for me…but who’s going to cry over my death??”….
God (for some godforsaken reason) decided that the onion had a point and granted it a wish that anyone who cut’s onions henceforth will have to cry and shed (what I call) onion tears whenever they cut it...

What I seek to emphasize here is that whoever u are….if u wanna cut onions … beware….and keep a couple of towels handy!!!

Anyways, back to the present, I was faced with this Herculean task of GARGANTUAN proportions a week ago…
If any of u have gotten the impression that I dislike cutting onions…let me clarify…it is an honour and a privilege for me to do such a task…the lingering smell of onions in my fingers(for quite some time) after I have finished is reward enough for undergoing such a ordeal. In addition, I also get to eat it…so I am quite happy J
Now, on to the task, let me emphasize the fact this is something that requires the utmost amount of patience and concentration….
I make a series of precise parallel incisions on the onion in all the three directions in order to achieve neatly chopped and uniformly shaped pieces, the fact remains that due to a clouding of vision, these incisions are neither parallel nor precise. It is then time for me to adapt the age old technique of chop as u please, and every chunk of onion brave enough to come near my knife is attacked with the atmost vengeance…
Anywayz, this process continued for about 15 minutes at the end of which 1 onion had been successfully dissected. Due to excessive water loss from my eyes, I decide to take a break and go chat on the phone…nice break, but what has been begun must be completed and after an additional 1 hr of hard work I am done. In front of my eyes are 5 finely (I showed no mercy) chopped onions ready for delivery to the higher authorities….
It suffices to say that I had a very nice lunch consisting of potato and onion curry accompanied by the usual variety of food.
So people, next time you eat onions, spare a thought for the person who had to cut it….
Here’s to THE ONION