Thinking outside the lunch box: Regarding desi crossover cuisine

Long ago perhaps one would have politely asked for details to lodge in your muddled mind but now, you either take it in with an air of amused astonishment or piece the ingredients together as a natural trajectory, pre-globalisation. I speak of the British national dish: Chicken Tikka Masala, usually available at Sainsbury’s in the frozen dinner form. So that after work, en route home, you can pick it up from your nearby grocers and pop it into the microwave while having your haldi-doodh latte. Later on scooping the Angrezi Khaana with flattened bread, better known as naan, or basmati rice, relished further with swigs of beer. Nothing could get more British, right mate? (And nothing sounds more archaic as the last two words of the above sentence; the only sightable parallel calling a policeman “Bobby”.) If years back, Robin Cook, former foreign secretary, called, with gratified appetite, Chicken Tikka Masala, “the true British national dish”, then who daresay, ponderously scratch one’s head in countering it?! It is here to stick, chalked out as the main course on the menu blackboard of all eateries; so thinking otherwise equals a task akin to nailing jelly to the wall. As mentioned beforehand, this not a fuelled-by-globalisation phenomenon

. Far from it! The British were a part of the Indian terrain for a good 200 years and but obviously the Mems took a fancy to the indigenous ingredients their Khansaamas prided their cooking with, thus the birth of the Colonial Anglo-Indian Cuisine or British Raj Fare. A sweet hotch-potch of dishes from both lands, though on this side it spills into numerous delectable regions. To name a few: Mulligatawany Soup, a Chicken lentil soup flavoured with Indian spices, Lamb Ball Curry, Railway Mutton Curry (however can one gloss over the Railway Culture brought here by the English), Hurry-Burry Chicken Curry (sprouting from Jaldi-Jaldi, as well as their love of localisms and alliteration), Pork Vindaloo and, come Christmastime, Rose Cookies. When India sent the British marching (did we really?) in 1947, they took with them the combined Casserole-thick recipes, which when cooked in their own cold-grey kitchens, were looked upon with disdain, bordering on disgust, by those fellow-citizens who had never served their country in the heat and dust of far-flung India. Just as their pre-dated, truly-off-the-railway-track attires and their ruddy, puffy skin. The puffed-up part, an off-shoot of the many Bombay Sapphire Gins ’n’ Tonics served ceremoniously by the Mem’s Lady-in-Waiting to be swoshed down like lemonade. (Ironic how the same very Mems were minding their own stoves and pouring out their own drinks once back home…) But to return to the cuisine disdain part: the English-Indian, if one may so address them as, were told to rid themselves of the curry smells only after which, could they sit down to a thorough-bred English supper of Roast Beef gravy, potatoes, peas and Yorkshire pudding. The continuation of this story for another day but what was post-Raj pack-up curry stench was embraced, adopted, no, immaculately grafted into their happy-to-stomach DNA. Of course, the number of Indians that made England their home added more flavours to the collective palate. Surprisingly, McDonalds first set foot in the United Kingdom on November 13, 1974…

Now to cross over the Atlantic to the good Ol’ United States of America. This side of the globe another story—leap-miles away from Paul Revere’s midnight ride, his horse tearing through the darkness, with him crying out, “The British are Coming”. America has been thought of as the Great Melting Pot; shut one’s eyes and imagine a cauldron brimming with flavours of Italy, Ireland, China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, Russia, Germany, India… my, I am out of breath. The list should have been flagged off beginning with Native Americans but cannot go back.  Here, it has to be brought to one’s pointed notice that over the last twenty five years or more, this land has been on a Patent Poaching Agenda. Bandits. Pirates. Heisting with unblinking unabashedness the spices and what not, and in front of our, to begin with communal noses then allied olfactory consciousness, propelling us, we as a nation, to hoist the Tricolour with passionate rage. How dare our home grown haldi/turmeric be proclaimed to be homespun by the Yanks? Educating the world round that its antiseptic properties is what magic is made of?! A pinchful of this powder added to your Smoothie or on-the-boil soup, an angelic antibiotic sans zilch side-effects that cleanses the system in entirety.  But surprises of surprises—the fellas’ that claimed copyright to turmeric were two Indians, Bharatiyas of Indian origin, born ’n’ bred in America. After what was a long-haul flight—where one prays that the pilot of our plane does not have brain embolism collapsing at the controls before the haldi-Bearers are recognised as the Lawful-Owners.  And at last, justice is served. Turmeric returns to its turf, to be used world-wide after its Desi Apothecary is given its rightful recognition. Then there is our Basmati—bouqueting  a garden in one’s patch of a yard. The aroma of our Basmati Chawal spreading across fields—the iron-clad gunny bags which they are scoofed into, unable to contain their essence were considered as all-American as Baseball. Another Lawsuit! By the way, Bas in Sanskrit means aroma and Mati stands for spiritual thought. It’s another matter that the Highwayman’s  sackful of Basmati was impounded before he could hare away with the booty. Should we not claim what is rightfully ours instead of giving out a war-cry, when on one snoozing afternoon, the poaching comes to light? Cease to be later-risers, rid our RipVanWinkle-esque nature ?! Before winding up, a whistle-stop trip to Down Under. Here an Aussie has taken “thinking out of the box” to an-all-new level. Yes, our Khatia or Charpoy, as the Brits would say, is being hawked for a whopping 990 dollars… advertised as an extremely comfortable Indian day-bed. This Khatia to eclipse the Yoga-Mat?! 

Food for Thought? Indeed. This fodder takes the biscuit. So bon appetit.