I have been wanting to write about a couple of inventions which I consider among the greatest for their everyday utility. One is the pressure cooker and the other is the backscratcher.
I have two different kinds of intimate relationships with the two. My relationship with the backscratcher is quite straightforward and one-sided—it scratches my back and I do nothing for it. You must make a distinction between a backscratcher and a buttscratcher that Peter Griffin in Seth McFarlane’s ‘Family Guy’ once hawked at a ball game with gusto. I do not use a buttscratcher.
My relationship with the pressure cooker is a little more complex in the sense that it requires some preparation to avail of its utility. It is intimate because what I make in it goes inside me. It cannot get more intimate than that.
While I have used the pressure cooker for decades, I have only just begun using the backscratcher. I must say I have become addicted to it. Before it came into my life, I had to engage in impossible contortions to scratch an itch on my back. You must have noticed how itches tend to rise in spots your hands cannot reach without causing a sprain. I seriously thought about installing a revolving backscratcher that ranchers use for their cattle but decided against it considering it would have abrased my back and damaged my spine. I need that, I mean a spine, in my profession.
The pressure cooker is such a remarkable invention which is credited to the 17th century French-born physicist Denis Papin. According to the Britannica encyclopedia, “The cooker heats water to produce very hot steam which forces the temperature inside the pot as high as 266 °F (130 °C), significantly higher than the maximum heat possible in an ordinary saucepan.” It first appeared as “Papin’s Digester” in 1679. Papin would be thrilled to know that we Indians use the heck out of his invention.
In fact, the cooker’s whistle, or seeti as they call in various Indian languages, as it lets out the steam is the ubiquitous urban sound that signals that life is normal. The steam has the fragrance of peaceful domesticity. Family discords calm disappear during the time the whistle is going off. The whistle tells you that no matter what life’s upending challenges are, the pressure cooker is one utterly reliable constant in hundreds of millions of households.
As technology goes, pressure cookers no longer fail. There was a time when the safety valve contained lead which would wear off over time. I am not sure, but I believe it is no longer used now. I have used my current pressure cooker for close to 25 years ever since arriving in the U.S. It bears all the burn marks of a battle-tested warrior. It is impossible to scrape off the carbon at its bottom outside. Every few days I try to get rid of it but give up.
I make all my daals and many of my vegetables in the cooker. The one thing that I do not/cannot make in the cooker is the one thing everyone else does—rice. I always get the timing for rice wrong. So, it is either undercooked or overcooked. I use the electric cooker for rice.
For Papin to think of something so exquisitely simple and yet so unfailingly efficient is extraordinary. Ditto the backscratcher.
I sleep with the backscratcher by my side in case an itch rises in the middle of the night. How is that for intimate?
Of course. I do not sleep with the pressure cooker by my side. That would be weird.