Yesterday, sometime before afternoon, things were pure chaos at home. Mom was having one of those days. She walking around the hall, and blabbering about her fate. I could hear her from my room like a tragic radio broadcast. Dad was lost in his usual tasks in the verandah. Big bro was out there pretending to be a garden expert. And me? Deep in the trenches with my messy, over-bugged code that wouldn’t stop misbehaving.

And then, like adding chilli powder to a wound, my second bro drops a casual bomb on Mom:
“Amma, a guest is coming for lunch.”

Boom.

Mommydon froze for a moment, looked like she wanted to scream into a pillow or possibly throw one at all of us. But she didn’t. She sulked, grumbled something dramatic, then marched straight into the kitchen like a warrior headed into battle.

A while later, I did what I always do. Sneaked into the kitchen, acting like I needed water  but really just wanting to watch her in action.

What I saw this time?
Chef. Engineer. Time manager. Magician.
All packed into one tired Amma in a cotton saree.

Operation Lunch Begins!

Yes, the task requirement was:
within a limited time, she had to prepare more food than usual. That’s where I noticed her strategy.

She had a double gas stove and a traditional inbuilt firewood stove and One brain doing five things at once


Here’s how she played it:

She took out yesterday’s rice from the fridge and put it into a neethupetti.
Then she grabbed a container, filled it with a quarter of water, and added three eggs inside. She placed the neethupetti on top, closed it with a lid – two tasks in one shot: boiling eggs + reheating rice.

In the second stove compartment, she prepared the fish gravy, and on the traditional firewood stove, she cooked a fresh batch of rice and finished it.

Parallel vegetable cutting was going on at the same time. No idle time.

Once the rice was cooked, she took it out and kept it warm. Then she placed another clay cookware on the stove and started preparing veg gravy for dad.

Meanwhile, the eggs were done. The rice from neethupetti? Warm and ready. She removed the fish gravy from the stove. And just like that…

Before I could even say “smells good,” she had a pan on and was frying the fish too.
All happening side by side, zero confusion, no chaos just flow.

Mommydon using System Thinking in the Kitchen!

Finally, food was ready. Table was set. I was lowkey drooling, waiting to taste everything.
And Mom? She looked at me and gave a small, soft smile – not her usual sassy one, this was a tired but peaceful one.

She said,

“You should try the reheated rice. That would tastes better than the other rice.”

Wait… what?

I looked at her plate.
She had taken the same reheated rice for herself.

She could’ve easily taken the freshly cooked one. She made it. She deserved it. But no! she gave the best to everyone else.

That moment hit different!

She always does that. Little sacrifices, quiet ones, like they don’t matter. But they do.

And what did I do, you ask?
Passed my reheated rice to my second bro and told him:

“Here. You brought the guest. You eat the sacrifice. Hero gets the hero’s meal.”
(And you better wash that plate too.)