The layers within

While peeling off onions to add to my curry preparation for dinner, the imposing façade emerged from the unknown.

“Human beings are no different. They are just like onions,” there goes off my friend Prema Singh as she watches me putting all my efforts into chopping the bulbs into fine pieces.

“What?” I ask, unable to stop giggling at the strange comparison between humans and onions.

“Yes, it’s so hard to define them. Humans, like onions, wear layers of mask on their face. So hard to understand what goes behind a human mind? They are complicated.”

“But don’t you think the comparison is a bit strange and funny,” I interrupt wiping off the tears rolling down my cheeks.

“See! Like your onions, humans too never shy away from making you cry,” she smiles shrugging her shoulders.

She has logic! I couldn’t do much, but smile in agreement.

“Let me tell you something. There was an old man at my previous workplace. He used to act as if he was eccentric, wearing tattered clothes and depicting himself to be a follower of Gandhiji. What do call them… yeah, simple living, high thinking kinda. While talking about work ethics, he would always talk of Manmohan Singh, who never took a single day off from work during his first tenure as the Prime Minister of India, except during his illness.”

Prema goes on… “His talks were almost prophetic. But deep inside, the old, scheming man would leave no stone unturned to mar the image of his juniors in front of the bosses,forcing many a poor souls to leave their jobs. I never understood humans. Nor do I try to, but it’s just that sometimes onions remind me of the ugly and unpredictable side of human beings.”

“That old man was as pungent and rotten as onions. I used to feel like peeling him off completely with a sharp knife,” says Prema unable to control her anger for the man whose malicious acts must have hurt her too.

But, I could not muster the courage to ask what the “old, scheming man” did to Prema.

It has to be something nasty, otherwise Prema is hardly the kind who would display such anger.

Layers after layers, the onions bared themselves naked on the chopping board. The finely chopped bulbs almost looked vulnerable. The pungency caught my nostrils as I slowly dropped them into the hot boiling oil in a pan.

As the content in the oil pan slowly turned into golden brown, I think I understood what Prema was trying to say…