The Perils of Being Inconspicuous

Back in college, we had this fellow who was so good at not standing out, at simply blending in to the background like a particularly plain variety of wallpaper, that it eventually led to his downfall by becoming his claim to fame and thereby making him stand out. Of course, in any classroom there are always some who stand out more while there are others who quietly go about their business. But this guy took it to an altogether different level – so much so that in the second year of college, one of our batch mates did not know his name or the fact that he was part of the batch. Now, a lot of you might think that isn’t such a remarkable feat at all – you’d have gone through 4 years of engineering college with over a 1000 batch mates and never known about a third of them. In this case, though, it’s the context that made it different.

Many colleges are blessed with a sprawling campus, spread over acres of landscaped greenery, dotted with department buildings, sports facilities and the odd patches of forestry. Others have smaller but adequately spacious campuses with modern facilities and comforts. We had an old hospital. And it was a rather small one at that, the sort of space where nothing could be hidden because there was no hiding space. What made it even tougher to be inconspicuous was that each year, there were just 2 batches of about a 100 odd each. It wasn’t the sort of space where a salacious rumour would unfurl in a slow and leisurely manner, deliciously gathering juicy tidbits as it traveled from person to person, with half truths and creative lies being sprinkled in as a shadowy game of Chinese whisper irresistibly gained momentum until the scandal finally erupted, leaving behind tattered reputations, broken hearts and ruined friendships in its wake. In fact it was the precise opposite – the sort of campus where the best-kept secret was common knowledge in ten minutes and within an hour would be the topic of heated discussion amidst howls of outrage at the next general body meeting.

Moreover, it was a business school – a place that fosters a cutthroat, competitive environment where students are actively encouraged to seek the spotlight, build networks, take credit and are even penalized for not talking. In such a scenario, then, to have never done anything of note, never been part of any scandal, never made a comical faux-pas, never uttered a word in anger, never gotten involved in an act of drunken debauchery, never been rumored to be dating someone, never been the one everyone sought just when an assignment was due, never organized a pointless talk or done anything at all remotely story-worthy took an extraordinary level of self-denial and restraint. Until that fateful day, of course, when the story of the batch mate who didn’t know of him spread like wildfire and his very low visibility became the cause for his newly acquired status of high visibility.

In many ways, Karnataka is exactly like him when it comes to the South Indian states. For a part of India that’s synonymous with loud colours, flashy politicians and over the top movies, the state of Karnataka manages to remain remarkably low-key. Take the film industry, for example. Even ignorant North Indians who call all South Indians Madraasis would’ve heard of Rajnikanth. A good number of them would’ve also heard of Chiranjeevi or Mohanlal. But a Kannada actor? Not a chance. The only Kannada actor they would’ve heard of would be Rajkumar, and that’s purely thanks to Veerappan having kidnapped him all those years ago.

It’s the same with food. Now, I must admit that I was pretty ignorant about South Indian food until I began life in Bangalore. Like many a clueless North Indian, I thought South Indian food consisted entirely of Idli, Dosa, Vada, Uthappam, Sambar and Rasam, along with maybe 2-3 varieties of rice. I assumed that the average South Indian went through life judiciously rotating between these dishes for breakfast, lunch and dinner before dying of culinary boredom. Over the years, though, I’ve come to realize how terribly wrong I was, and how each of the Southern States boasted of distinct cuisines that had much to admire. Except for Karnataka.

The Kerala cuisine is a lot like the people of the state – fun loving, indulgent and with a fondness for the good life. It’s like that entertaining uncle whose visits you looked forward to as a kid, the one who’d bring you fancy gifts, regale you with tall tales and take you out for a fun evening. It’s the sort of food that tells you “Hey, it’s a holiday, so why don’t you sit back and relax with a drink while I rustle something up”. Like a lot of coastal cuisines, while vegetables exist it’s the non-veg where the real fun lies. Seafood, beef, mutton or chicken – the Kerala cuisine displays exceptional mastery over the entire spectrum of non-veg cooking.

Tamil cuisine, much like the state itself, has a sense of the extremes about it. There is the Tam Brahm part that’s characterized by Spartan vegetarian restraint – it’s the bespectacled studious boy in school that’s always buried in his books and would feel guilty at the mere thought of having fun. Then there’s the rest of Tamil cuisine, which, as a sort of “F*$# You” to the Tam Brahm cuisine, goes all-out with the non-veg, the oils and the spices. As if the rest of the Tamilians are rebelling against the restraint imposed on them by the Tam Brahms and reveling in an uninhibited display of sinful, decadent indulgence through their cooking.

Telugu cuisine, like their movies, is the ultimate masala fare. It’s that over-the-top, utterly bonkers potboiler, the culinary equivalent of violent pelvic thrusts and garish fluorescent clothing. Like Kerala cuisine, Telugu cuisine also goes well with alcohol, but the Telugu attitude to alcohol is a lot more focused. It’s not the laid back; relax by the backwater with a drink in hand approach. Instead, it’s grim men standing around seedy, dingy bars, drinking earnestly and copiously to get away from life’s many troubles. The intense spiciness of the food is designed to make you forget about everything else at that moment in time and hence works well in such situations.

Karnataka cuisine, and one has to use the word cuisine liberally to even call it that, feels like someone went to a bad hostel mess and decided that it could form the basis of an entire culinary discipline. Like a punishment or a prison sentence, there is an endless sense of bleak monotony. Every dish manages to look dull, grey, and lifeless, packing in all the appeal of a particularly depressing bowl of porridge. It’s the sort of food you feel condemned to eat in stoic silence, almost as if in mourning. Some people live to eat, while others eat to live. In Karnataka, they eat miserably to live. And, in a remarkable feat of culinary incompetence, they’ve managed to make their sambar worse than what you’d find anywhere in North India!

Culturally, then, Karnataka has somehow managed to carve itself a niche of inconspicuousness, carefully honed over decades of bland everyday nothingness in a wide variety of fields. And then Bangalore came along and single handedly shot Karnataka into prominence. No wonder Karnataka hates it so much and the city is so neglected!

You Say Potato

There’s a lot that marriage can teach one about life – adjusting to two sets of families, being more household-ey than you thought possible and, if you’re married to someone from Calcutta, the crucial importance of potatoes. Prior to getting married, from a culinary perspective, I’d been more North Indian than Bengali. So while I’d greatly appreciated potatoes in terms of their versatility and adaptability, the sheer ubiquity of it meant that I’d never recognized it as being something special. When added to one of those disliked vegetables for which you don’t know the English names, it made matters more palatable; when added to a good vegetable, it made the dish complete without stealing the show in any way. But when it boiled down to it, on matters that concerned dishes that one truly looked forward to in a salivating-in-anticipation manner, it was never really a must have. It was happy to cede the spotlight to chicken or mutton or paneer, and it’s not like you really missed it much.

There probably isn’t any sort of food chain or food pyramid diagrams that are based on the glamour quotient, but if there were, the potato would surely be right there at the bottom of it. No doubt it’s universally loved, but its status has always been that of an ever present, comfort food that you can count on. In movie terms, the potato would be Morgan Freeman – comforting, agreeable and dependable, but, you know, when it really came down to it, not quite Brad Pitt. It’s not the scene-stealer, the showstopper, the coup de grace at the end of a fantastically elaborate meal. It’s always been the regular, every man vegetable that’s happy to stay in the shadows, stoically going about its business while allowing the more glamorous vegetables like avocado or zucchini to bask in the spotlight. It’s defined by its adaptable nature – it’s not fussy about soil or climatic conditions – not for it the temperate weather conditions or well-irrigated farmland requirements that more fussy crops may seek. Of late, it has even handled all the vitriol directed at it by the trendy, carbohydrate-demonizing brigade with an air of quiet dignity.

I’d always thought it was only in regions with a less evolved cuisine that the potato could really take centre stage. Take Ireland, for example, where there was once a great potato famine that killed a lot of people, so you know that potatoes were really important there. It’s the sort of country where you’d imagine everyone was too busy drinking or fighting the English, so the pursuit of gastronomic excellence would not have been the primary preoccupation. Hence, the Irish would’ve just grown the potatoes, boiled it, tossed some salt in it and got on with life. Or the Russians, who were unlucky enough to have a country that was so cold that you could only grow potatoes in it. So they even figured out a way to make alcohol out of potatoes, and survived the winter on vodka and potatoes. Or you’d associate potatoes with the more basic and rustic examples of cooking, such as the Shepherd’s Pie, because you’d imagine that the shepherds didn’t really have any other ingredients handy. The potato, then, was not something you’d link with the more refined, top-notch culinary branches of the world.

Until now, that is. Married life has taught me that Bengali cuisine, for all its glorious complexity and breathtaking range of ingredients and spices, has reserved a special place – no, a position of pre-eminent reverence – for the humble potato. A mutton curry, no matter how well prepared, is only politely appreciated in that half-hearted manner that does just enough not to discourage you completely. Throw in some potatoes, though, and it’s greeted with rapturous screams of delight and looked upon with ardent adoration, a dish that’s truly savoured and promptly devoured, leaving behind an air of blissful contentment.  It’s the same with biryani. An excellent biryani is duly given the respect it deserves, but it doesn’t go beyond that. Unless it comes with a piece of potato, in which case it is promptly elevated to one of those divine culinary experiences best savoured in reverent silence, a truly soul satisfying experience that will be spoken about in awed tones for weeks to come. Even chicken, or fish, or most other dishes, will have the potato tossed in. Sure, the potato may play a support role in the dishes, but it’s a crucial and utterly indispensable support role – without it the dish simply isn’t complete. It isn’t the sort of support role that’s negotiable or interchangeable – you cannot toss in any old vegetable that’s there in the kitchen instead and expect to get away with it. Sure, us Bengalis (well, ok, not me) may be regularly embarking upon supremely complicated gastronomic feats involving tender coconuts, prawns, banana leaves, mustard paste painstakingly ground on a shil nora and what have you, but the potato still retains a cherished spot at the heart of it all.

The inherent Bengali laziness is often ascribed to the effects of rice, but I suspect the potato may be equally culpable in this regard. When we Bengalis start getting visibly and distressingly rounded in shape as middle age starts to catch up, we’re often referred to as Roshogullas, in recognition of that more visible example of Bengali cuisine, but calling us a potato would probably be more accurate. Years ago, Inzamam ul Huq took such umbrage at being called a potato by an Indian cricket fan that he almost beat him senseless with a cricket bat. A Bengali man would quite likely have taken that as a compliment and invited you home for lunch involving mutton cooked with…you guessed it…potatoes!

All Trumped Up

Here’s the thing – I’m not a religious nut job, I don’t think everybody having guns is a good idea at all and neither have I married one of my cousins. I do, however, harbour serious reservations about evolution. But it’s not because I buy into creationism. I don't believe that a big, bearded man in the sky dressed in flowing white robes created everything during a particularly hectic week before resting on Sunday and then flouncing off never to be seen again. And yes, while all of modern science points to the fact that evolution really has transpired and that humans have been getting smarter over the centuries, something seems to have gone terribly wrong over the last few months. I don’t know what Darwin would’ve made of it, but how can you equate humanity getting smarter with Donald Trump being voted as one of the presidential candidates in the USA? And this isn’t some banana-republic type outpost in the tropical backwaters we’re talking about – the sort where mosquitoes, diseases and tyrannical dictators pop up with alarming regularity – this is the world’s most powerful country. And a democracy, at that – what good is for the people, by the people and of the people if the people themselves are that foolish?

To the outside world, it neatly fits in with the whole stereotype about Americans being dumb. While I’ve never been an advocate for all things American, I somehow don't believe that stereotype to be true. Sure, there may be a large number of Americans who think that we Indians go back home riding an elephant once we’re done with our call centre shifts, but you don’t get to be the world’s most powerful country if you’re peopled entirely by idiots. So I’d always assumed that the US was more a country of contrasts – that for every dungaree clad, tobacco chewing, shotgun toting country bumpkin that was sitting on a farmyard porch all day; there was an overachieving, academically and extra-curricular-ly hyperactive, Ivy league educated, sharp suited city slicker working 20 hours a day to reinforce that country’s capitalist hegemony over the world. It’s the same if you looked at that country through the lens of health habits – while a large segment of the population is obese, there are also enough super-fit people to counter act that and establish some sort of weight equilibrium. For every oversized-cheeseburger-eating, cola-sipping, eat-all-you-can indulging, morbidly obese American that gets wedged in the doorway, there is a calorie counting, carbohydrate eliminating, gym-going, fitness paranoid, wellness obsessed American who only consumes something if it’s decaf, no fat, low-salt, no sodium, zero trans fat and without added sugar. So yes, it’s the most obese country in the world, but it’s also the country responsible for every single health food fad from wheat germ, quinoa and kale to all manner of diets and nutrition theories that have fuelled enough paranoia, anorexia and insecurity to allow an entire industry to get obscenely rich on the back of dodgy health promises.

Of course, it isn’t just America that’s showing signs that evolution has wandered off for a gentle stroll downhill. With our chief political preoccupations in India revolving around Modi’s degree, the extreme threat to national security posed by left-leaning JNU students and the critical need to establish nationalist credentials by screaming Bharat Mata kii jai, we’re not exactly the brightest when it comes to understanding priorities. Clearly, it isn’t too much of a stretch to conclude that we’re all plunging headlong, arms flailing and voices shrill with screaming, into a dumber race.

On the bright side, though, this isn’t the case with our machines – they’re only getting smarter with time. For a long time, the world was a simple place where mobile phones were as heavy as a brick, could double up as a weapon of self-defence and could be used to place calls, send texts or play Snakes. And then the smart phone came along – suddenly your phone could send emails, allow you to browse the internet, order a taxi, predict the weather and generally do just about anything apart from brewing a cup of coffee. Not content with smart phones, the companies decided that everything should be smart. So smart watches came up, which would do everything already being done by your smart phone, except that you could also wear it on your wrist and really squint to read all that stuff. Then along came the smart TV, which allowed you to do everything that you could do with your smart phone, except that you could also mount it on your wall and luxuriate in the vastness of the screen. It was the era of convergence – your smart phone became your secretary, your secretary became your lover, your lover became your computer, your computer became your home theatre, your home theatre became your smart phone and it all got very confusing indeed.

My only complaint is that if instead of running about like headless chickens making everything smart, the companies could just focus on making one thing really, really, clever. You know, take the smart phone, for example, and turn it into a clever, genius phone. A phone so clever, it could warn you not to drunk dial someone the next time you’re hammered. A phone so clever, it would shut down automatically if it feels you’re being too rude by constantly checking your phone when you’re out meeting people. A phone so clever, it could stop you sending that rude email that you’ll regret the next day by pretending to send the email but not actually sending it. A phone so clever, it would notify pesky clients you’re on holiday even if you’re not. A phone so clever, it’s GPS could warn you if the restaurant you’ve chosen for your next date is not any good, or ask you to get a life if you haven’t ventured out for days on end.

A phone so clever, it would convince Donald Trump not to run for presidency.