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!

Object Surrender

Whatever happened to those Russian children's books?

Those who grew up after liberalization may not know this, but there was a time when, geopolitically speaking, India got into bed with Russia and, if not go all the way, at least engaged in considerable hanky-panky with them. Officially we may have been these fence sitters who were part of the Non-Aligned Movement, but there was a lot of Russian action we were getting on the side. It all started with Nehru and his fascination for Socialism. The Russians were only too happy to capitalize on this and over the next few decades, they enthusiastically palmed off flawed economic models, pointless 5 year plans, dodgy defence equipment, inefficient heavy machinery and some drop-dead gorgeous children’s books.

In many ways, the Russian books created a sort of alternate, more chaotic and less linear world compared to the one populated by Enid Blyton. While Enid Blyton books were warm summer days, golden sunshine and picnics by the beach, the Russian books were bleak grey skies, endless wilderness and shadowy, mysterious forests. While Enid Blyton books were neat sandwiches, lovingly wrapped tuck hampers, scones and treacle (now that I’m grown up, I know what scones are, but am still mystified as to what on earth treacle actually is), I can’t remember anyone ever eating anything in the Russian books. While Enid Blyton books followed reason, had lessons learnt and comeuppances delivered, the Russian books were arbitrary, random and chaotic, a bit like life itself. Oh, and those illustrations. While the Enid Blyton illustrations were direct and almost textbook like in their simplicity, the Russian illustrations were breathtaking, surreal and seething with an underlying manic energy that jumped right at you.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I love Enid Blyton books and feel they should be made mandatory reading for kids today – but the Russian books appealed to a different part of the imagination. The Enid Blyton books were like the early Beatles, before they turned to drugs and went all counter-culture – clean-cut, fresh-faced, short haired and full of that cheerful, good-natured optimism that envelops you in a warm embrace with its catchy infectiousness. The Russian books, on the other hand, were like the Stones – longhaired, bedraggled and messy, cigarette dangling from one mouth while coolly gazing into the middle distance, enticing you with the mysterious allure of the forbidden.

Along with the Berlin Wall, the end of the Cold War sadly also heralded the disappearance of all those Russian children’s books. While the truth of life is that objects keep disappearing – there is also a way to acquaint yourself with you a whole new world of objects. The catch is that it involves getting married, which may be a deterrent to a lot of people. Like with any other major life event, there are a lot of changes that marriage brings about to one’s life. And most of these are ones that you’re prepared for since you hear about them all the time – either through the movies, friends, families, helpful advisors, unsolicited advisors and other media. What you’re not prepared for, though, is a whole lot of objects suddenly coming into your life that you didn’t even know existed. Or even if you knew of their existence, you never really saw much point to them back in your bachelor days. Here, then, are just a few of them, in no particular order:

Reed Diffuser & Other Aromatic Thingeys

As a bachelor, it never struck me that a house needed to smell good. I mean, sure, you wouldn’t want it to smell like a pigsty, but as long as you were fundamentally hygienic there was never any threat of that happening. Now, if you hadn’t washed clothes in a month or were hiding a dead body it was a different matter, but my bachelor days weren’t that messy or adventurous. Marriage, though, has introduced me to a whole range of products that make the house smell good, for no discernible purpose. Reed diffusers, aromatic candles and tins containing delicately perfumed gelatinous blobs sprout up in hidden corners of the house, wafting subtle fragrances of lemongrass, patchouli and other exotic ingredients I hadn’t heard of.

Bedcovers

When a bed sheet got dirty, you just washed it in the laundry and put it back. Now, there is another bed sheet on top of the current bed sheet to keep it from getting dirty. This is called a bed cover. Theoretically, you could have another bed cover to keep the original bed cover from getting dirty and this could go on in an endless loop, but thankfully it stops at the bed cover.

Cushions & Cushion Covers

After religion & patriotism, cushions & cushion covers are among the biggest scams perpetrated on mankind. Of course, I exaggerate – cushions never killed anyone. Much like communism, though, cushions sound like a great idea on paper. “Sofa not comfortable enough? Add some cushions and sink in!” In practice, the cushions lounge about idly on the sofa, looking pretty and decorative, but the minute someone actually uses the sofa; they’ll toss the cushion to the other side.

Cutlery & Crockery

Of course, I’m not suggesting that I didn’t use cutlery & crockery before I got married. The difference, though, was the attitude towards them. Before marriage, it was functional and utilitarian – something you needed to eat your food with. After marriage, it’s a work of art, something to be drooled over, hankered for, sought after, admired and cherished. Also, it’s no longer just plates and spoons and forks – it’s tea sets, dinner sets, soup sets, starter sets, serving platters, serving trays, serving spoons, assorted bowls and ceramic whatnots.

I could go on with the list, but an instinct for self-preservation and domestic harmony means that I shall stop now.

A Text from the Government

“Marry at an early age. Delay first child. Have sufficient gap between first and second child.”

Now, if someone were to tell this to you, who do you think it would be? If I were to take a shot at it, here are some plausible guesses:

1. Your parents.
2. One of those meddlesome relatives that always transpires when there’s talk of marriage in the family.
3. Your newly married acquaintances that are still in that phase of enthusiasm that distinguishes an early convert from a weary veteran.
4. A Karan Johar movie.

On the other hand, here is a list of entities that are quite unlikely to ever tell you something like this:

1. Al Qaeda.
2. Your unmarried friends.
3. Deodorant advertisements.
4. A James Bond movie.
5. The government.

So imagine my surprise when the government gave me this matrimonial advice via the admittedly modern (for a government) medium of text messaging. As any single Indian person in my age group would know, once you’re beyond a certain age, you pretty much prepare yourself for everyone around you to be trying to convince you to get married – whether it’s parents, grandparents, random relatives, friends or acquaintances. What you're not prepared for, however, is for the government to also join the “get married” chorus. You pay taxes to the government, the government fines you if you’re drunk while driving, the government takes you through endless layers of red tape whenever you need anything from it, the government randomly digs up certain stretches of the road on your way to office – these are the sort of things you’re primed to expect from the government. Marital advice from the government, however – now that can completely throw you off-balance.

I suppose for the government, this is the perfect sort of reply to a lot of its detractors that have been complaining that the government has not been doing anything much at all ever since it took oath – that policy paralysis has meant that the government has just sat and twiddled its thumbs while the economy went for a lazy stroll downhill, or that the only thing the government was active in was corruption. Well, for all those detractors, I’m pleased to say that the government has been quite active when it comes to texting. It’s not just personal marital advice that the government has been giving me – it has given me helpful tips to avoid dengue, it has asked me to design a mascot for the Income Tax Department so that I’m perfectly fine giving away chunks of my salary as long as there’s a friendly smiling mascot present, and it has also asked me to pay service taxes just in case I’m a food business.

As is customary with a lot of the things that the government does, this whole business of the government sending texts does not make any sense. Think about it – it was the government that came up with the regulation in the first place to ban commercial SMSs so that ordinary consumers were not troubled by pesky texts through the day. And what does the government do once those texts stop – send texts of their own!

At the same time, however, this does raise a lot of interesting questions. Who in the government first came up with the idea of sending text messages to citizens? Is this the government trying to keep up with the times and be ‘with it’ by showing that it can also communicate through texts?

More importantly – is there a centralized government department that just deals with texting? I’m guessing there should be – otherwise if all government departments started sending their own texts willy-nilly, things would really get out of hand and we’d be inundated with 50-odd texts every day. A centralized texting department also fits in well with the government’s fondness for regulation – it would mean that the texting department gets applications for sending texts from all other government departments, which are then duly processed by a committee that decides what messages are approved to be sent, which ones are rejected, if any amendments need to made to the copy, etc. In which case, how does one get into this department? It kind of sounds like a fun job!

And it could be made even more fun if the texting department started using texts as a tool for foreign policy. Instead of wasting time in state-level meetings, it could begin communicating foreign policy in the form of text messages. Here are some possible texts that could be sent:

To: Government of Pakistan

Being best friends with the Taliban is like leaving your child in the custody of a grizzly bear. It could only lead to disaster – ha ha.

Ministry of External Affairs, India.

To: Non-Aligned Movement

Just checking – why are we still in existence? Didn’t the Cold War end like 20 years ago?

MEA, India

To: Government of USA

This is all very confusing. Are we strategic allies, regional allies or key allies? Also, what’s the difference? Oh, and Osama found in Pakistan!!! Lol! Told you not to trust the Pakistanis!

MEA, India.

To: Kingdom of Bhutan

Of course we haven’t forgotten u! What nonsense! Tell you what – how abt we make your king the chief guest for the Republic Day parade? Warm Regards.

MEA, India

To: Government of Mongolia

Fresh spices, high staple-length cotton and the finest iron-ore – these could all be yours, in exchange for some weapons-grade uranium. If interested, please get in touch.

MEA, India

Ok, I think I should stop now, before one of the copywriters for the Idea ads gets a brainwave out of all this and creates a typically daft ad about governments across the world bringing about world peace by sending each other friendly text messages.