The Blah Blah
India is a very diverse country when it comes to Indian food habits, and it is no doubt that every iota of our Indianness finds a deep satisfaction in a great Thali. Just to clarify, Thali is an assortment of many dishes according to the State you belong, viz. Rajasthani, Andhra, Bengali and so on. In this era of globalisation many restaurants have decided to replace the word Thali with ‘meals’, so you have the Rajasthani meals, Andhra meals, etc. I am not quite sure of the exact meaning implied by the word ‘meals’, but I assume that the restaurants generously entice their customers with the offer of multiple number of meals in a single time meal; this indigenous concept, I believe led to the discovery of the buffet system.
Anyways, lets snip out my verbosity and focus on the issue. During my stay in the South and my visits to the Northern states, I discovered that our country is divided into two directions, irrespective of the 28 states. The North and the South, the East and West are imaginary lands and lead to more complexity in our understanding of the Indian geography. Thus implied, if you belong to the upper half, thou shalt be a North Indian (with the ‘o’ pronounced as ‘aaa’) and if you belong to the lower half, thou shalt be a ‘Madrasi’ or a ‘South Indian’. My parents knowing my exceptional ability to attract unreasonable problems, were worried that I would be entangled in the love and hatred of this great geographical divide. Hence, I hereby declare myself as a son of the great state of Odisha, in the Eastern lands. A state where even the most savage warriors like ‘Ashoka the great’ gave up his arms and saluted the mighty warriors of Kalinga. So, as time progressed WE, the great lineage of an exceptional legacy decided to eat, sleep and become pot bellied, and just quote great phrases from the past glorifying our existence. But with all due respect to my dear ‘Northie’ and ‘Southie’ friends, I would love to take a dig at your food habits.
Its Time
At the stroke of 12.30 p.m. an entire population of hungry souls with expectation in their hearts enter our hostel mess. The Northies looking for the “red(uu laal waala)” looking curries and the Southies eying “puliyogare” or the rasam, and when the expectations are not met, one can hear the mess manager’s soul being cursed. Now going by mess standards, anything that is red, yellow and has any kind of pulses in it is North Indian and the rest dishes are South Indian. The plates, those are of the size of a public transport truck’s steering, are heaped at a corner. Your objective is to grab a plate and make a rush for the ‘roti’ line ,collect the curries and then debate whether the food is edible or not. My dear Northie friends throw their hands up in despair and say “Abey Yaar”, in the absence of the “red” curry and somebody comments on the presence of chopped onions and coriander in the “kheer”(a sweet dish, made of milk and rice), only to be rectified later that it is curd rice. Glasses hurt the environment of the mess and hence, a jug is kept to satisfy your thirst.
Now in a regular South Indian ‘meals’, at a ‘family restaurant’ you can find an enormous plate with a number of small bowls placed at its inner circumference. The rice is neatly made into a semi-sphere and placed at the middle; there are two more rice items, the curd rice in a bowl and a rice bath. Here comes the million dollar question, what is a Rice Bath? My initial interpretation was that the rice has gone for a bath, in my language bhath or bath means rice itself, it is like, two languages shoved into a colorful variety of rice. Yes, my ignorant friends, rice bath is a selection of multiple flavoured and coloured rice. But our mess decides that as students, we need to master the art of austerity and hence the different coloured curries, rice, rice baths and rasam mix with each other representing unity in diversity in a single giant sized plate. Now comes the tricky case of ‘rasam’, which is a mere case of optical illusion. A rasam bowl in a restaurant may look full, but don’t you be tricked by its appearance as the lower half of the bowl is just a big over boiled tomoto(tomato). Rasam is a dish which is consumed with anything possible, be it alcohol, a ‘meals’, as a soup. They say that Rajanikant discovered the versatile dish(rasam) and hence it has got these magical uses.
By the end of your meal at the mess, the poor stomach cries for help in the form of burps. The reason I suppose being the curry made of tree bark, leaves, finely ground stones and excrement. When you go towards the wash basin, time yourself for a 20 second wash, or else you will be drenched, by the furious gargling and spitting by the fellow by your side. The taps resemble dams, as when you open them, the water surges out at a speed which could wreck an entire ship. During the whole mess timings the mess manager remains grounded due to a possible nuclear attack by the students. As the whole population walks back to their rooms, burping and speculating the possibility of a “red” curry for dinner, the mess manager works hard on inventing an even worse dish while reading an issue of Erotica.
Eat your Rice Bath there till I belt out yet another master piece. Hail Indian food!
Aalsi Batman 