Cooking is one of my favourite hobbies. I am just obsessed with it. Although my attempts at cooking have led to failure many times, I always try to do it again, hopping that I will be an accomplished cook one day.

Once I tried to make a mug cake. I followed the recipe exactly as it was written, but the cake got burnt from the bottom and remained raw from the inside.

Also, the cake didn’t come out of the pan in one piece and broke into pieces. My creation (the cake) looked and tasted pathetic, but mum wouldn’t let me waste it, so I had to eat it.

Another incident like that occurred a month later, when my siblings and I were trying to make a pudding.

I accidentally dumped the whole packet of baking powder instead of pudding mix and the result was a gooey and weird tasting paste that nobody wanted to even touch, let alone eat! We had to listen to one big lecture from mum for wasting food.

After that incident, or let me say accident, I decided to make simpler things under adult supervision. One day, I attempted to make custard with the help of my mother. But in the middle of the recipe, my mother went away to attend a call and things went wrong from there.

The nest broke more than three times, but the bird did not give up and kept trying until the nest was strong enough to withstand the wind

The next step was to add two heaped tablespoons of sugar. Instead, I added two heaped spoons of salt as sugar seemed like salt to me! When my mum came back, we did the rest of the cooking and let the custard cool for an hour.

When my mum tasted the custard, she looked at me with fire in her eyes. Obviously, she knew what I had done. She then threw the custard away and did not say a word to me all day long. To me, it was the end of my adventures in the kitchen. I had lost all hopes of being a fabulous cook.

Days passed into months. I never asked mum to allow me to try and cook something, although I craved for it.

One sunny day, I sat in our garden, all heartbroken. There on a nearby tree, I saw a little bird trying to make a nest. It was picking the twigs, leaves and bits of other stuff to secure the nest.

The nest broke several times due to strong winds and the twigs would fall down in the garden, but the bird would start all over again by picking the same twigs and doing it in a more secure way. The nest broke more than three times, but the bird did not give up and kept trying until it was strong enough to withstand the wind.

Just then a thought came to my mind, if a little creature can keep trying without giving up, why can’t I? I got up and went to mum to take permission to try and cook something once again.

She smiled to me and said, “Sure, young lady! Just pay close attention to what you are doing.”

I decided to make custard on my own. And guess what? I succeeded! It was the dessert of the day in our house ... everybody loved it! I felt so happy.

That day I learnt a lesson to always pay attention to what I was doing and to never give up.

Published in Dawn, Young World, February 10th, 2018