This blog is on a short break, along with its owner. In Delhi for a wedding in the family with side trips to Amritsar and Agra.
Also, this blog has just crossed a nice, tidy little milestone - 25,000 visitors. So, a big thank you to all those of you who read me, whether or not you participate/comment. Thank You! And, to all my female readers, a happy women’s day!
A couple of days ago, I noticed while watching a Kylie Kwong cookery show, that she used the word “exotic” no less than four times in the space of ten minutes. She was discussing a certain Middle Eastern spice mix being used in a dish she was preparing for that episode.
What is exotic? The relevant definitions from dictionary.com include:
Whereupon, the question arises: foreign, strange, not fully naturalized or unusual from whose perspective? Kylie’s shows, I imagine, are made primarily for a Western audience (Australia, U.S) to whom Middle Eastern cooking and its ingredients are likely to be strange and unusual. Hence, the use of the word, exotic.
However, with global movements and globalization, things aren’t quite so simple anymore. The U.S, for instance, is a community of immigrants, and new immigrants, including those from North Africa and the Middle East keep entering. Is harissa or tahini exotic to them?
People travel, meet new people, eat new foods. Global food chains and import businesses ensure that foods from one part of the world are well-stocked in another. Even if you don’t travel and are finicky about trying new foods when you do, television brings new experiences to your armchair.
Once upon a time, exotic and new were framed purely from the viewpoint of Western societies. This is a key thrust of the seminal work, Orientalism, by Edward Said: The Orient exists for the West, and is constructed by and in relation to the West. It is a mirror image of what is inferior and alien (”Other”) to the West.
What is worse, perhaps, Western views of what is different or exotic soon become the norm. For instance, I often see Indian clothing or practices like Mehndi being described in our magazines as ethnic. Again, the dictionary meaning of ethnic is pertaining to or characteristic of a people, esp. a group (ethnic group) sharing a common and distinctive culture, religion, language, or the like. Why would we apply this term when talking about our own cultural groups, i.e. setting them up against a ‘normal’ ‘other’? Besides, it doesn’t really describe the clothing in any way.
The question to be asked is, how will globalization and global movements impact exotification? If Kylie Kwong’s programmes are going to be popular in Australia and the US and India and in the Middle East - from whose perspective are ingredients going to be classified as exotic, or not?
It’s a well-known fact that he who pays the piper calls the tune. For generations, books, magazines, TV programmes, films - all of these transmitters of culture were made by and for the West. With large audiences now coming up in other parts of the world, will this change?
I talk to my mother almost everyday, and on every one of those calls, she will ask me what I am eating/have eaten/plan to eat for lunch/dinner, depending on the time of day when we talk. I may go adventurous for dinner and choose from rotis, pasta, noodles, soups, salads or any number of eating out options but lunch follows a regular and monotonous pattern : rice (tomato/coconut rice if I am in the mood), a dal or sambar, a vegetable and curd. Despite this, my mother will want to know what the menu for the day was.
(source: http://getaway2india.wordpress.com)
We are Indians, you see. Food is how we show love and affection. Food as in: talking about food, asking the other person if (s)he has eaten, pressing the person to eat until they burst, packing up leftovers for people to take and of course, complaining that they eat too little. Never mind if the mound of rice on that banana leaf is as high as a mini Kanchenjunga.
Food is the glue that brings us together. I am yet to go a party in India where the hosts are not left with copious amounts of leftovers. Food that would have satisfied a marauding army must be available, regardless of the size of the crowd.
Food is memory, and memories that are unique to every family; delicious memories that leave the mouth watering and the heart tingling, years after one has left home. World travellers and gourmets will still remember that one taste which can never be found elsewhere. For me, it is my mother’s vegetable pulao, topped with pieces of fried bread. Not only have I never eaten this style elsewhere, I am convinced that even if someone else tried it out, it would never be the same. My mother claims to have no secret ingredients, but I cannot bring myself to believe it. Mostly, I refuse to cook pulao, unable to bear eating something that is not the same as the original.
Food is custom. Curd rice follows rasam saadam which in turn follows sambar saadam. There is a comfort in this dull routine that will soon be wholly unfamiliar to an entire generation of children reared on cosmopolitan eating.
Food is celebration made ritual. Kozhakattai for Vinayaka Chaturthi, Seedai and rava laddu for Janmashtami, Sundal for Navaratri. Kaju katli and Jalebi may taste as good but they cannot give me quite the same thing as the adirasam my grandmother used to make for Deepavali.
In my younger years, along with my sisters, I enjoyed making fun of what I saw as older women’s obsession with food. Now, as my grandmother grows old and frail and can no longer make adirasam, I feel the loss of something more than just food. New age gurus like Michael Pollan tell us what we in India have perhaps always known : that food is much more than just the sum of its parts.
I see myself becoming more like my mother than I thought I would, and am no longer embarrassed at talking about food, or the making of it. So, don’t be surprised when I ask you, are you cooking/eating something special for New Year’s? And if so, what is it?
A very Happy New Year to all of you, and see you in 2010.
I cannot remember when I first heard the Ramayana or who told me the story. I imagine it must have been my mother when I was very young, but I have no memory of it. When I was around 7 , my grandfather, a Rama-bhakta himself, gifted me and my sisters a book called The Prince of Ayodhya. And I was hooked. It was a story and at the same time, because it was the story of Rama, it was a true story, one that thrilled and inspired me. It’s been a long time since then, yet, even now as I straddle the fence between faith and disbelief, the Ramayana is so much part of my life that in times of great stress, I find myself comforted by writing or chanting the name of Rama.
One thing that has troubled me tremendously though, is the banishment of Sita. After pining for Sita for over a year, raising an army and building a bridge to cross the mighty ocean, after fighting and killing and much destruction, Rama banishes Sita simply because a washerman doubts her faithfulness? So NOT happening! In the first version of the Ramayana that I read, the story simply ends with Rama and Sita assuming the throne. In fact, I have it with me now, and this is what it says:
The King and the Queen were supremely happy and ruled the kingdom for a very long time….During their long reign, there were timely rains, the crops never failed and famine was unknown in the land…All the people in the kingdom were well-fed, well-clothed and well-protected…The names of their King and Queen were ever on their lips…In fact, the long and prosperous reign of Rama and Sita was a Golden Age, the like of which is unknown in the annals of men.
A ‘live-happily-ever-after’ ending, just like any child would want. It was much later that I heard the other ending, the one in which Sita is abandoned and left to raise her children alone. Even as a young girl, it came as a small satisfaction to me that Sita later expresses her anger at Rama’s unjust abandonment of her and chooses to return to her mother, Bhoomi Devi.
As a practising Hindu and as a feminist, how does one reconcile this unjust treatment of one of a great heroine by someone who is revered as the ideal man? I mention as a practising Hindu, because I assume that for an atheist, the question would be irrelevant. For someone who loves the story, however, it is difficult to believe in the ideal of Rama when confronted with his cruelty to Sita.
One explanation that is usually offered is that while Rama was an avatar of Vishnu, he was still a mortal man, and therefore, he had his failings, one of which was that like other mortal men of his time, he was ready to cast aspersions on his wife. Another is that he was first a king, and then a husband, and as King of Ayodhya, he could not have a queen the public did not believe in. In this version, the washerman is only a symbol of public opinion in general. A third option is to believe that Sita’s banishment is simply not part of the original Valmiki Ramayana, and therefore does not need to be included. Indeed, Ashok Banker’s Ramayana series (which reintroduced me to the joys of the Ramayana) takes this track, and personally, it is the option I find most comfortable.
There is a fourth opinion, based on a more esoteric reading of the incident; for instance, this interpretation by a Vaishnava teacher, which sees Rama’s banishing of Sita as a desire for a more intense experience of love, in the form of separation. To my logical mind, that is a little hard to swallow. After all, Rama already had experienced separation for a year; why would he chase it again?
Do you have a version of Sita’s abandonment that you can live with or has it led you to reject the Ramayana altogether? Is Rama simply an unjust man obsessed with the notion of purity or a righteous man faced with difficult circumstances or do you prefer to believe that it simply didn’t happen that way? Do share!
I haven’t been in the mood to write anything original here, but I came across some interesting links on diverse topics, which I thought readers of this blog may be interested in.
First, an sobering article on the high maternal mortality rates in India and how different approaches are being tried out to combat MMR, keeping in mind local conditions such as the lack of reliable ambulance services.
Then, it appears that after the disaster that Bride & Prejudice was, the Indian film industry still wants to take its chances on Jane Austen. So, what we have coming up is a Hindi screen adaption of Emma, with Sonam Kapoor playing the lead. I can just imagine the impulsive and charming Emma being transformed into a juvenile and flighty Ekta, sorry, Aisha. Sigh. Coincidentally, I am reading Claire Tomalin’s insightful and creative biography of Jane Austen at the moment (creative, considering the limited amount of material available).
Also, Webster’s dictionary defines ‘Statesman’ as 1 : one versed in the principles or art of government; especially : one actively engaged in conducting the business of a government or in shaping its policies. 2 : one who exercises political leadership wisely and without narrow partisanship. I’m finding it difficult to see how Rajan Zed qualifies, besides being quite unable to understand why he should have a problem with English novels being adapted for India. Sure, one would also like to see adaptations of Indian novels, but, hasn’t he heard of the numerous versions of Devdas?
Finally, Mint is doing an absolutely must-read series on Industrial Safety in India. These are the kind of nuanced, well-researched and objective pieces that are increasingly hard to find in any Indian newspaper. So, if Mint is not on your usual reading list and you haven’t seen these, please do go read them.
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