Food for thought

This is a wrong topic for a guy like me to write on. I am not an epicurist, neither am I a cooking enthusiast. Far from it, I’m in fact quite happy to be on the receiving end to be honest. But while sincerely doing my job at that receiving end, I couldn’t help notice some patterns which I’d like to share. These are based purely on my personal experience, so may not be even true in general. Don’t be mad if you disagree, just laugh it away.

So here’s what I think of different cuisines, and also the culinary habits/preferences of different communities.

English: The eating habits of the English are not as legendary as their drinking habits. Not even close. On most evenings English lads hang out in pubs and drink till their organs start swimming in beer. On other occasions when sobriety is the order, they take great pleasure in having their traditional dishes such as roasts, pies, fish and chips etc. They also have a tremendous appetite for Italian pastas and Indian curries; some of which have been sufficiently anglicised (e.g. Beef Madras Curry). Another global food originally English is Sandwich, inadvertently invented by the Earl of Sandwich. In the modern age when being busy is universally fashionable, a quick sandwich may be England’s most important contribution to the world after the steam engine.

English food is simple in preparation but quite heavy on heart. Loved by all except the calorie conscious who’d probably faint seeing a plate of good ol’ fish and chips.

Chinese: Everybody goes there despite the open challenge of chopsticks. But those chopsticks may be the reason why the Chinese rarely have bellies (how much can you eat with those sticks?). Westerners love Chinese food. South Asians like me can’t recognise the meats in their dishes, but never mind, we have own brand of Chinese food which is very tasty and 100% recognisable. Our fake Chinese food industry also serves as an apt response to their fake goods industry of everything from condoms to Apple stores.

I must say that while many (except maybe Africans) go to Chinese restaurants; the Chinese (or Orients) can rarely be found in other places. They’d rather scrounge every street of the town to find that one take-away shop selling any form of noodle served with any type of meat.

Indian: So spicy even reading this might make you sweat. But surprisingly some westerners, especially the Brits, love it. They can curry anything edible. Funny enough they also name their curries as per the hotness factor, rising from Masala to Madras to ‘only for adventurers’ Vindaloo - all bland to most Indians.

Indian food served abroad is NOT a fair representation of the country’s variety. If you are dining in an Indian restaurant in the UK, there’s a 99% probability of your plate containing a Bangladeshi version of a North-Indian dish. And our North-Indian food is anyways highly influenced by the Arabic, Middle-eastern cuisine. The other types of Indian food (Konkani, Chettinad, Southern, Eastern, Western) is virtually unknown to the outside world.

Indian restaurants usually have all types of customers except, you guessed it, Orients.

By the way, to my British friends – BALTI in India means a bucket, usually found in a bathroom. Most Indians won’t even associate the word with food. So someone was too imaginative while naming the Indian dishes in the UK. Ask the Bangladeshis/Pakistanis.

Japanese: What’s common to Japanese horticulture and Japanese food? Simple – Bonsai. Tiny portions and exorbitant prices are the hallmarks of Japanese food. Adopting Japanese car maker Toyota’s lean principles, the country’s cooks seem to have eliminated some non-value add steps (cooking) from their production process. The results have been mixed so far.

Frequented by rich westerners, others usually window-taste. Of all the cuisines mentioned here Japanese is perhaps the only one which you’ll never find a takeaway shop for. Can’t afford to be that cheap, you see.

African: First, they haven’t commercialised their food as much as the other communities have; their cuisine is in serious need of some serious marketing. The few shops which have come up seem to have only African customers. Only the culinary explorers among the Westerners and South Asians give it a try. Chinese don’t walk on these streets. African takeaway shops in the UK are actually Caribbean I think (going by their radiant yellow boards and a menu containing Jerk Chicken with Ginger beer).

American: It’s difficult to define American food when Burgers are German and Pizzas are Italian. That’s doesn’t leave anything genuinely American, does it? But ignoring that technical detail, American food is consumed in obscene quantities all over the world, thanks to the McDonald’s and Pizza Huts at every corner. If you carefully look in your local map these heavyweight ambassadors of American cuisine may have outnumbered the bus stops. Heath does not seem to be American food’s biggest strength, but people don’t seem to mind. People in all countries, religions and disown their doctors for 20-30 mins to feast on those greasy burgers and pizzas. If nothing, this popularity makes American food the most racially agnostic food. Obama should be proud.

French: I cannot summarise French food as well as a Greek restauranter I was talking to a couple of years ago. He drew an interesting parallel between French food and an English football club (Arsenal, which had a French coach Wenger). He said French food is similar to Arsenal’s play – much style but little achievement. Just like Arsenal plays very well every time but rarely scores, French food is usually tasty with loads of stylish garnish, but never filling. Can’t disagree with him completely.

French cuisine is the Louis Vuitton of food industry. Priced and branded similarly; sought by similar clientele.

Italian: 50% of it Pizzas (which in olden times was the food of the poor, usually made of the leftovers). The other 50% is pasta in various shapes with tomato and cheese. Tomato may be the only representative of the vast vegetable world in Italian food. Extremely popular (remember Eat Pray Love?) with everybody.

Forgive my daftness, but I can’t seem to understand the frenzy for most things Italian – men, food, fashion, cars. I think the country’s best things (Architecture, History & Nutella) have got sidelined as a result.

Mediterranean, Middle-East, Egyptian: Forgive me for I’ll be disclosing a stupid unscientific logic I sometimes use to analyse these cuisines. It goes like this- India carries an image of a land of vegetarianism, while on the other extreme, the West on the other hand is almost carnivorous. I think Midde East, which is the geographic mid point, also happens to be the average of these two extreme cuisines. Middle Eastern food has roughly equal proportion of both vegetables and meat. It’s delicious, filling and quite healthy too. The trouble here is that too many countries (Greece, Lebanon, Turkey, Israel etc) claim the right for most items (Olives, Humus, Falafel etc) so you don’t know which one you are having.

These restaurants are liked by most, barring a few who may not like the ‘no-alchohol’ board found in most of these places.

That’s it guys. This session had turned quite long. I’m hungry now, time to grab a bite. Let me order something. Wait…….what the hell is that peculiar name!!


Take care and have fun.

Roti, Kapda Aur Makaan

This phrase was the war cry of India’s poor against the rich and powerful during the 70’s and 80’s. Subtly themed in the artistic works of that period, it was a recurring emphasis on the need for the three most basic essentials of any person – Food, Cloth & Shelter. Having grown up in those times and then having grown out of it, I now know that these needs are not specific to my country alone. They are quite universal. Maslow called them the fundamental physiological needs in his famous ‘Hierarchy of Needs’ theory. Though not apparent in today’s materially abundant world, these needs are as old as humanity itself. For thousands of years man’s quest was to seek and fulfil these needs for him and his family. It is for these reasons that any breakthrough in making them available has been nothing less than a revolution. Each of these breakthroughs have pushed mankind forward in no less degree than the oft quoted examples of fire, wheel and iron. But for some reason unknown to me, the importance of these breakthroughs has often been understated or completely forgotten. So I’m setting out to give some them the attention they deserve. Join me in this journey.

Roti (Bread)

The earliest life changing discovery made my man was agriculture. This discovery was the beginning of the end of nomadic life for him. By sowing the seeds in the ground for food, he also sowed the first seeds of today’s society. Everything else – family, languages, tradition, domestication of animals, employment, governments would not have been possible if man hadn’t decided to settle down and farm. However some scholars also believe this to be man’s first big mistake, for it opened a Pandora’s box we haven’t closed since – competition, jealously, wars, crime etc are the price humanity has paid (and still does) for this decision. Whichever way you look at it, the impact of agriculture is monumental. And at the heart of what we call agriculture lies man’s first major invention – plough.

It was the simple plough which allowed man to till the land. Before that he used basic hand held tools (hoes) do dig up holes and plant a few seeds. But plough made agriculture an industry. Overtime man learnt to use animals to pull the plough and this practise exploded the domestication of animals, to the extent that within a few centuries cattle became a symbol of man’s assets, a reflection of his prosperity, status.

I sometimes even feel that plough was perhaps a bigger invention than wheel. While plough brought massive benefits immediately, wheel’s impact may not have been so dramatic. Maybe because we see wheels everywhere around us today, we think wheel was more important. But back in those times there was no need of transportation in the first place, and even if needed, wheels were practically useless without decent roads. Animals (Horses, Camels) and not wheels were the primary modes of transport until just a few centuries ago, so wheel didn’t have any major role to play. In fact the earliest use of wheel was as potter’s wheel, making clay pots to store food. That was perhaps its biggest utility for the first few thousand years. Doesn’t seem big change compared to a plough, does it?

Over the next 12,000 years the basic plough underwent many improvements. Better designs and lighter material made the job easier. In my personal opinion the most beautiful change in this journey was transforming the fundamental job from digging to turning the soil. I’m not sure where it happened and who did it but it is a big change I feel. The first basic ploughs mostly dug through earth I think. That’s how I remember from the old Indian movies and the few visits to my village. Looks like a tough job. But I’m also aware that the more advanced ones have a curved board next to the blade, which simply turns the soil making the job a lot easier.. It’s like how your local ice-cream guy uses a scoop to turn the ice-cream and not strictly dig in it. That’s a wonderful idea, don’t you think? A little googleing tells me that the modern design of plough is at least as old as 1763 when a Scotsman James Small used mathematics to find the right curvature to make the job most efficient. My school teacher was right when he said, ‘Mathematics is everywhere except in your heads’.

Kapda (Cloth)

I’m not a believer in caste system and abhor its practice in any form or shape. But I’m quite aware of my own caste and how it determined what my ancestors did for several generations. As it happens I was born into a community of weavers. By that stroke of chance I was surrounded by weavers and farmers at my birth. And if it weren’t for the bleak future facing these professions, my family wouldn’t have migrated to the nearest city for better opportunities. And who knows, if these 1-2 key events hadn’t happened, I’d perhaps be operating a loom or tilling some dry land now instead of punching away on my laptop in a relatively comfortable London home. Destiny is a great playwright. However, even in this long fascinating journey, I vividly remember my family trips to our village in my childhood, where overcome by sentiment by father would occasionally complain that I should have learnt the loom at least as a legacy if nothing else. That topic has been closed for more than decade now and we all have moved quite far from it. But I do occasionally run into relatives at family gatherings (the great Indian weddings) with whom I exchange updates and stories. I tell them my job related trips and they share their trips to their Silicon Valley equivalent (Tirupur, Tamil Nadu) and we have a laugh. That’s about it and it saddens me sometimes that the link has been broken forever. However interestingly enough, I have recently learnt that there still is a great link which connects it all, right from the begining to the end. It goes like this...

Man’s relationship with cloth is spectacularly old. Recently, German anthropologists used molecular dating to establish that human body lice (which lived in clothing) first appeared at least 107,000 years ago. Sewing objects having been found by archaeologists which date back 40,000 years. The oldest piece of actual cloth found is a 9000 year old piece of linen found in Turkey. In those ancient times the process would have been like this - stripping fibres from plants, soaking them in rivers and then spinning and weaving them to make cloth. It was an unthinkably long and tedious process to produce something barely comfortable and effective. Somewhere down the line we learnt a few tricks to do this job better. First of them was the discovery that a finer thread can be made from cotton or animal fur by twisting together the loose threads between hands or on thighs. Then some genius came up with the idea of ‘spinning’ by which thread could be made significantly easier using a spindle, weight and gravity. Remarkable though it was, it was still only an input into cloth making. The much bigger shift came when some pre-historic Einstein came up with a loom a few thousand years ago. In its simplest form a loom consisted of parallel threads stretched between two pieces of wood having the mechanism to weave them together. Various improvements were made to this basic loom over centuries. Though the process became much simplified over time, spinning and weaving remained a manual job and occupied much of the time of the men and women of those times (hence the word ‘spinster’ for unmarried ladies). Next came the Industrial Revolution and with it this tradition of thousands of years started to get erased. Spinning and weaving became industrial processes and clothes were produced on a mass scale. Though scores of livelihoods were affected, zillions of mundane laborious hours were also saved by industrialisation. And for once, people didn’t have to be super rich to own fine clothes. Everybody could afford good fine inexpensive clothes. We arrived into modernity smartly dressed, only until the fashion pundits came and told us otherwise, but that’s another story.

You’ll be mistaken if you think this story of looms ends here. What followed next was even bigger. Back in the 19the century Indian weave was quite popular in the West, especially Cashmere (from Kashmir obviously). But pure Cashmere is completely handspun taking a long time and is also very expensive. A few cities in the west started manufacturing cheap imitations of Cashmere to cater to lower segment of the market. In 1890 Indian products entered the American markets. That same year an American textile trader told his brother-in-law about a new technology in loom. The technology involved passing multiple hooks through a set pattern of holes to pick up the threads automatically to produce cashmere patterns. This brother-in-law happened to be a statistician who liked the idea and developed a similar model to pass wires through a set of holes and automatically count the population. It was a roaring success and he went on to start his own business. This person was Herman Hollerith; the machine he made was punch cards, and the company he started was International Business Machines (IBM), the grand dad of IT industry. In fact IBM was originally called the ‘Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation’.

So hang on, let’s recap. We started with the age old profession of weaving, which my ancestors practiced, and ended in the world of computing, which as it happens is my current profession; this entire story connected in a single thread. Interesting ‘weave’, isn’t it?

Makaan (Shelter)

The story of housing is a long one, starting right from the caves our ape-like ancestors lived in to the modern intelligent homes that hopefully my grandchildren would be able to afford some day. I don’t intend to go over the milestones in this space for two key reasons. Firstly, my ignorance on this subject prevents me; this has never been my subject of interest. Second, and more important, I feel there is something buried in the details of this journey which is extremely remarkable, perhaps as important as the journey itself. In fact I wonder why nobody seems to mention its contribution in the overall development of mankind. Every house built in the last few thousand years has in its construction inevitably used this simple machine – lever. Also called fulcrum, it is the simple way to lift/move very heavy stones using much lesser force than would otherwise be required. Anybody who admires huge ancient constructions like Pyramids, Stonehenge etc, is in fact also admiring the power of this simple lever. Physics has classed levers as one of the six simple machines. But history seems to have gone silent about it. I don’t think man would have been able to build many wonders, or go about doing his daily activities without employing the use of levers. So whoever first realised its power and used it, has pushed mankind forward a great distance. I again believe this invention was as important as wheel or fire. I am unable to confirm this, but based just on daily observation, it appears to me that of all the species on Earth we are the only ones who have unlocked and tapped a lever’s potential. I don’t remember ever seeing any other animal using a lever in its activities. If my assumption is correct, then perhaps this simple machine should adorn a place in the hall of fame of those inventions which have made the ascent of man so meteoritic.

With this my friends I come to the end of my essay. I hope you found it interesting and informative. I also hope it has helped a few of you appreciate some simple things we often take for granted, how each was a revolution in it’s own right and instrumental in building our great story so far. Please feel free to leave your feedback, comments below. Tell me which of the three you liked best, share others which you feel are equally wonderful. 

I’d like leave you with a simple quote I find quite humbling. It may not be directly related to today’s topic (another day's topic surely), but it makes one appreciate the so many little things that come together to make the next big thing possible.

‘In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe’ – Carl Sagan.

Have a wonderful day!!