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!