What was going on when I was born?

Poland says it has paid about $200 million of the $500 million in overdue interest it owes Western banks, a West German bank reported today. However, bank officials reached in London, Frankfurt and Vienna said that, as of Monday, they were not aware of any significant payment. In a statement released by the Dresdner Bank, the West German bank that has coordinated Western banks' debt rescheduling talks with the Polish authorities, the bank said that its chairman, Hans Friderichs, and the board member responsible for East European lending, Christoph von der Decken, had traveled to Poland Monday. The statement reported that Poland's Finance Minister, Marian Krzak, had told them Monday during a visit to Warsaw that Poland had paid all but ''less than $300 million'' in the interest arrears that it had promised to pay by the end of 1981.

President Reagan, in an abrupt policy change prompted by his advisers' warnings that he was being viewed as racist, called today for legislation to outlaw tax exemptions for organizations that discriminate racially. However, the President's announcement leaves in place a new policy of granting tax exemptions to segregated private schools until Congress outlaws Text of statement is on page A11. it. The result is a contradictory state of affairs in which the President is proposing legislation to end a practice initiated last week with his blessing. Four days ago, Treasury and Justice Department officials, with Mr. Reagan's direct personal approval, announced that the Internal Revenue Service would no longer deny tax exemptions to nonprofit institutions, particularly private schools, that practice racial discrimination, as the service had done since the Nixon Administration.

WHAT equipment is needed in setting up a basic modern kitchen? What dishes - and what techniques - are appropriate for the neophyte cook? Pierre Franey and I recently worked out a series of recipes for ambitious beginners, and in doing so compiled a list of utensils that we consider essential to those who want to cook wisely and well. The recipes start with the preparation of a white sauce and proceed to the making of French pastry for an apple tart. While not enormously complicated, they do require a certain sense of adventure. And those who work through them successfully will be ready to move onto more elaborate and sophisticated culinary undertakings. Our menu be gins with what I call ''mock eggs Benedict,'' which includes the making of a basic cream sauce that was one of the first things I lear ned to master myself in the days when a classic hollandaise w as beyond me. There are also a broiled dish, a casserolethat involves poaching a chicken, a fine but elementary red wine stewand, finally, the tart.

A fire investigator for the state has termed ''accidental'' the 1980 fire that killed 26 people at Stouffer's Inn in Harrison, N.Y., and has said in court papers that an assistant district attorney told him not to write reports about it. An affidavit by the investigator, Edson F. White, accompanied a motion filed today by defense lawyers to dismiss an indictment against Luis Marin, a former Stouffer's coffee waiter charged with arson and 26 counts of murder. ''My opinion based upon analysis in depth o f the facts that we weredealing with an accidental fire was directly delivered to Mr. Fleming,'' Mr. White wrote. ''His response wa s, 'I don't want you to write any reports.' ''

One day recently, the acting principal of Jamaica High School in Queens got a letter from the Board of Education's testing division asking that he let his students participate in a pilot examination to help construct a new test. Realizing that the Schools Chancellor had directed that testing be minimized to preserve instructional time, the acting principal was reluctant to grant the request. He finally assented, however, feeling that some schools had to cooperate if new citywide tests were to be developed. The acting principal and the Chancellor happened to be the same person, Frank J. Macchiarola, and the incident exemplifies one of theof the many w ays in which he has discovered the difference between issuing order s from headquarters and carrying them out in the field.

-------------------------------------------------------------------- Robert Farrar Capon, an Episcopal priest and food writer, is the author of ''Supper of the Lamb'' (Harcourt Brace Jovanovich). By ROBERT FARRAR CAPON IT is no exaggeration to say that cookery has just been through a reformation. Nouvelle Cuisine, with its protests against old ways and its emphasis on freshness -with its insistence on unfloured sauces, its borrowings from the Orient and its featuring of exotic ingredients - has left a permanent mark on gastronomy. And yet. As with so many reforms, it is the exotica of the movement and not its solid accomplishments that have captured the popular imagination. Turbans of flounder with blueberries and melon balls roll regularly off domestic assembly lines; the kiwi has become a cliche; green beans, uncut, tender and unstrung, threaten to become the definition of dining, and walnut oil and raspberry vinegar are almost a bore.

Extreme cold continued to envelop the New York metropolitan area and much of the rest of the country yesterday. Across the nation, at least 100 fatalities have been attributed to the weather since Saturday.

The Chinese Government registered a strong protest today against President Reagan's decision to sell the Nationalist regime on Taiwan more F-5E fighters. Mr. Reagan's decision not to sell the more sophisticated aircraft requested by the Nationalists did not appear to mollify the Peking Government, which has expressed its objection to the sale of any American weapons to Taiwan. The protest, which was issued today by the Foreign Ministry, implied that the Chinese Government was particularly unhappy at not being consulted about Mr. Reagan's move beforehand. Seen as Inte rnal Matter The State Department announced Monday in Washington that President Reagan had decided not to sell advanced aircraft like the FX jetfighter to Taiwan but to let it continue co-producing the F-5E model that it is already using. It was hoped that this compromise would be acceptable to China.

The agreement in the A.T.& T. antitrust case was called a ''good settlement'' by Federal Judge Harold H. Greene, who has been presiding over the yearlong trial of the suit brought by the Justice Department. However, the judge refused the request of both parties that he dismiss the case immediately. Instead he insisted on examining the merits of the divestiture agreement first. (Page A1.) G.M. and the U.A.W. agreed to link wage and benefit concessions by workers to lower prices for cars sold in this country. The agreement came on the first day of talks prompted by management complaints that high wages were making cars too expensive to be competitive. Anyone buying a G.M. vehicle after midnight will be eligible for a refund, executives said. (A1.) Ford followed three of its competitors in offering new incentives to car buyers. (A16.)

The authorities have stepped up an attack in the press and at the universities against liberal writers, artists and scholars, arousing fears among intellectuals that they will suffer reprisals for speaking out under martial law. At 11 A.M. today, Marian Brandys, a 69-year-old former journalist and author of historical biographies, was arrested; the police who burst into his apartment told him to bring along a suitcase, a sign that he may be in jail for quite some time. Mr. Brandys was one of a group of eight cultural and intellectual figures who had signed a petition to Gen. Wojciech Jaruzelski, head of the Military Council, condemning martial law as ''military dictatorship.'' Whether other signers were also arrested could not immediately be determined.

A chart in Business Day yesterday incorrectly showed the November fig- ure for consumer installment debt out- standing. A corrected chart appears today on page D11.

In an unsettled corner of this strifetorn ci ty, as many as 80 stainless-steel cars a day have rolledoff the assem bly line of DeLorean Motor Cars' modern plant, itself the occasiona l victim of the violence. But despite that outward mark of success - no mean feat in either Ulster or the depressed automobile industry - the fledgling concern faces an awesome array of problems that appears to have worried even the company's indefatigable founder, John Z. DeLorean. Most tangibly, the company was forced on Jan. 5 to pull back a planned stock sale for the second time. The $12 million offering, at $12 a share, was to have yielded critically needed capital for the $90 million cost of developing a larger version of the car, without which no one gives the auto maker much chance of long-term survival.