Curry

Coming home after work, I enter the apartment building, and get into the elevator.  I am overwhelmed by the savory aroma of an Indian curry. An assault of cumin,  a slight waft of turmeric, and-- subtle in the background-- caramelized onions.  Delicious! But also, who cooks in the elevator?

It seems inconsiderate.

Big chopping knifes and scalding hot pans flying around in that tiny elevator.  What if someone has to take a child out in a stroller?  In that tiny elevator things are bound to happen.  Oh, and the spices! It's dangerous. They could get in a guys eye. There are a lot things that it is okay to do in an elevator, but cooking curry is definitely not one of them.  

I get off the elevator and the spicy aroma continues into the hall.  "They must have made a big batch." I guess.   The smell might even be stronger here.  I look around to see if there is any spilled on the floor.

I like the smell, sure, and I even think that I might like some curry tonight. But the curry I make is the Korean/Japanese curry from a package, and it is a far cry from what I am breathing in.  "If you are going to make it in the elevator," I rant to myself, "then leave it there so everyone can have some."  

I get home, and as I am cleaning the dishes that have built up in the sink since the morning, my wife asks, "What's dinner?"  I know what she meant was "What's for dinner?", but I want curry, and I have been working all day while she has been watching YouTube and dirtying the dishes, and if a fucking language cannot distinguish between "What is dinner?" and "What is for dinner?" then either you are using it wrong or you need a better language– it is not up to me to fix it– so I offer my usual: "The meal that you eat in the evening."  To me it is a victory, but she neither understands what I said, nor cares. YouTube isn't over yet.    

And so dinner is either a bagel, or cold rice and bean curd soup that has sat out all day. I ask my children if they are hungry, but they  cannot hear me past YouTube.  

"I'm going to warm up my bagel in the elevator," I tell the cat, and while he looks concerned, he lets it go without comment.  But; as I am carrying a bagel and the toaster oven to the elevator, I realize that we don't have an extension cord long enough to reach the elevator. It dawns on me that the curry vandal  must live in one of the apartments near to the elevator.

Eating a cold bagel with cream-cheese and smoked salmon, I hide out down the hall from the elevator, so I can keep an eye on it.  Surely they will come back and fry up some samosas.  I have to find out who it is.  

People go in and out of the elevator, but nobody looks the least bit culinary, so I eventually give up and go back home.  My family have eaten something, I don't know what, and left another pile of dishes in the sink.

"I'm going to bed." I announce.  The cat seems uncomfortable with the fact that everyone else ignores me, but he has bigger concerns. He is trying to find a way into the cupboards in the kitchen.  

I get up early to go to work, and as I am leaving the apartment building, I see a guy waiting behind the bikes with a bag of onions. He doesn't look Indian, or Pakistani, but I know what a bag of onions is about.  I walk off to towards my office,  but when I get past the dorms, I circle back to the apartments, and hide amongst the bikes. Bag-of-onions is getting on the elevator!

I slip into the building and run up the stairs.  The elevator has stopped on the third floor. I'm fast, but by the time I get there the door is closing. No one is about.  No footsteps echoing under the load of a bag of onions.  

The elevator hasn't moved, and I think I smell the caustic scent of coriander frying in oil.  "Got you!" I triumph to myself, quickly poking the elevator button.  But when the door opens, there is nobody there.  

I step into the elevator disheartened.  And as it starts down to my floor, I notice a bunch of lemongrass in the corner of the elevator, and feel the sweet odor of coconut milk.  

They don't put onions in Thai Curry, do they?