FOOD AND LETTERS

Been a long time since my last post but I was busy with my undisputed first love- music. Which again is very subjective because it comes only after family and God, but then again aren't we all complicated sons of bi***es?!LOL. OK, anyway like I was saying it's been too long and I thought that I better get scribbling or I be outta practice and all rusty. So here I am to give you my two cents worth.

There is something called ritual, and no matter how primitive that sounds on closer examination we all have our own rituals. One weekly ritual of mine involves Sundays and the newspaper supplement that comes with the Hindustan Times- BRUNCH. There is a particular column in it by a certain gentleman named Vir Sanghvi that has become my 'quantum of solace'! It concerns one of my most favorite subjects, food. Oh yeah! and what foods this chap writes about- truffles, caviar, Kobe, smoked salmon, free range eggs... the whole friggin hundred yards if I may say so.

He has his own style of putting across his views,it being decidedly high brow and more than a little snob. For instance he loves to poke fun at the very fake pretensions of the new rich who make huge blunders with their food choices; some of them think that caviar is actually shark eggs! According to Mr. Vir Sanghvi the source of the food and the process that goes into making it is as important as the final version that lands on expensive china plates in the Ritzs and Carltons. And I heartily agree on that, me fancying myself as a son of the soil and what not.

However just as one starts to think that he is incorrigibly snobbish, he turns around and kicks the same high society snobbery square on the nose. And how he does it! He will mercilessly taunt the most expensive places about their 'shitty fare' and then in the next paragraph wax eloquent on the heavenly flavors that one can find at the roadside stalls in Cambodia! Simply masterful the way he transcends classes and flouts norms. The man is also very opinionated and, I suspect,more than a little narcissistic. But that makes reading his columns all the more interesting!

Someone once pointed out to me that all the major decisions of the world most probably involved food in one way or the other. And after careful consideration I have to agree, and also say that the person who said 'The way to a man's heart is through his stomach' knew what he was talking about. With one slight reservation, why leave the women out? Ciao!