The writer laments the loss of the special status of Biryani as a dish
This has been cooking for quite some time. Though it began with the indignation we felt, when we first visited the Middle East and saw our civilizational pride, our king-of-cuisine – the Biryani, out there in the market, competing with the lesser morsels.
Agreed, we had heard in our Marketing class, how Americans snugly boast they can even sell refrigerators to Eskimos. No wonder, the USA is the hub of all the global over-priced brands. Still, even that does not justify that biryani should be selling at the same price as a Burger! One of these had to go up. Or, down.
After all, is it even a thing to compare a fast-food like burger; prepared in minutes with a sleight of hand, slopping buns and patties and sloshing sauces, ready to be finished as fast as it was made; with Biryani – a dish that whips up the image of trains of caravans importing and exporting rich, exotic, aromatic spices, all the way from Iran to India, just to land in the hands of the then-master chefs, who again, had travelled 100s of miles to land in the courts of Mughal rulers, to display their culinary skills and earn a spot in those kitchens.
Kitchens, whose grandeur had evolved along with their exquisite cuisines, over hundreds of years of Mughal rule, and its ensuing peace and prosperity, to almost a form of fine art. With biryani being its Mona Lisa.
Needless to say, all this imagery came crashing down, when we came in touch with reality. Our royal Biryani getting the same treatment as a burger! Don’t we have any sense, or even shame, to be devaluing our national, or rather, international, or even ratherer, ‘historical’ heritage?
However, this wasn’t all. There was more to come. Even more than finding out that in Australia too, the poor rich Biryani is priced the same as a burger (talk about standardization!) – It was the blow, that not only was its price being sabotaged by the market, but so was its value. And the latter, was totally unacceptable. The culprit here, was a historical narrative floating around, by word-of-mouth. The same mouth that, after savouring this delicacy, was slandering its lineage.
One such accomplice was a lady I met at a social gathering recently. Whence our conversation graduated from the usual small-talk to topics of some value – Biryani, for example. Before I could open my mouth, which I wasn’t keen to either, (having the topic of our discussion on the tip of my tongue, quite literally), she was waxing eloquent about how Biryani is a one-pot dish that had originated in olden times to serve marching armies, en masse.
Little did she realize that she was rubbing salt into an already open culinary wound.
Biryani!! Of all the dishes! A one-pot dish?? As if the poor dish has not suffered historic injustices enough. Now it was being equated with one-pot dishes! Dishes that have their own, but entirely different history. Of having born in crises like famines and wars, to prevent starvation and malnutrition.
Times, when most households did not have enough to cook a nutritious meal and thus, pooled leftover groceries in a community kitchen to cook a one-pot dish that, even though a wonderful example of human ingenuity, was meant for the common/est people, nonetheless. While, the elite enjoyed their Biryani, meticulously prepared by expert chefs using the most exquisite of spices and diligently-perfected recipes, in fancy kitchens.
This lady’s history seems to come from the same (though not ‘sane’) school of thought in India that is busy replacing current history, by cooking up its own fictional history, to Israel the Taj Mahal, the pinnacle of Mughal architecture, as a Hindu temple. Seasoning its narrative with crooked logic and non-existent evidence, to manifest the saying “A lie repeated thousand times becomes the truth”.
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