Locked down, we took a huge step – from ‘Fast Food’ to ‘Past Food’

It was a bread slice. Ordinary white bread. Over which I could see butter and grainy sugar sprinkled.

Below the picture were 3,900 ‘likes’, with long responses written to the question the post had asked: ‘Malai bread — kya aapko apni bachpan yaad aai?’

What other food of your childhood are you reminded of, it further asked. And the massive number of dishes named and described in response would be enough to launch a new ‘Tiffinbox TV’ channel.

Barring the period of the second wave since this April to June, when the Covid scenario turned grim, it seems like all that India, and much of the world, has been doing since March 2020 is – Cook. Post. Eat. Repeat.

You open your phone to food posts, stories and reels, and to homemakers whose YouTube following can give star chefs a complex. Raksha ki Rasoi, Nilu’s Kitchen, husband-wife cooks who call themselves Vahchef, village cooking where a granny cooks with a big pan on a big fire under a big tree, Seema’vin samayal, Bhat n Bhat – where a young man called Bhat, sitting under the Mangalore tiles of his simple coastal home, tells you in endearing Dakshina Kannada accent how to make jackfruit-seed sambhar while he grates fresh coconut, adds coriander seeds and red chilli, and you can almost smell the aroma of that boiling broth waft into your flat.

Are we really eating so much or are we only seeing food so much around us?

Restaurants are still hobbling back, but food aggregator apps are seeing roaring business. The last time food occupied so much of mankind’s mind space was probably when food could be got only by hunting, foraging in the forests or fishing. But then ‘progress’ happened, agriculture came, then came Culture; lands became countries, cities and towns, and people became ‘cultured’. Among pursuits of art, music and politics, food stayed important but became only one of the pursuits.

Indian food culture is ancient, rich, and incredibly diverse. We, the people, have also had our priorities that we follow, well, religiously. Best described by the Marathi proverb, “Aadhi Potoba, Mag Vitoba” that roughly translates to “First the tummy god, then the god in the temple.” It may seem ironic that a nation that loves its food to bits, also loves to fast. But then, we are also the nation that has a separate food category of ‘fasting food,’ which is so rich in appearance and taste that we would want to reach the table faster to get to it. ‘Fast food’ is the guest that came from the West, stayed through 2-3 decades until the host country decided it had overstayed and stopped paying it attention, turning slowly to ‘Slow Food’ once again.

The millennials had little exposure to the original food culture that their parents had, though; grandparents aren’t generally around anymore or have had to take a backseat and watch their grandkids chomp down pasta instead of puliyogre (tamarind rice, tangy and rich with groundnuts and spice), the unpronounceable lasagna in lieu of lasun parantha. My friend Deepa’s daughter, when asked to pour sambhar on top of her little mound of rice, said, “Wait ma, how can I eat this without plating this?” Plating, if you haven’t watched Masterchef Australia for the past 4-5 years, means “arranging food to enhance its dining experience,” in posh plates. Anyone for whom food is functional may say “Just eat and go ya!”, but you got to hand it to a teeny virus to put a pause to the food fuss.

Suddenly, people stopped chucking the rinds after polishing off a watermelon – you can make melon rind dosa, no? The Brits were asked to keep even banana peel as cookery show queen Nigella Lawson slided a board of those “mashed, softened peel” into an Asian cauliflower curry!

Buttermilk that would have been discarded as terribly sour now ‘masks’ itself in fluffy rava idli, leftover rice jumps in to become crisp tikkis. The humble pumpkin and cutlets made of forgotten lowly tuber cousins such as genasu are now cool. Even the vessels to cook food are going from non-stick to traditional ones – brass and bronze. The idea is clear: What your ancestor did is what’s best for you.

We have taken a huge step during this pandemic, moving from ‘Fast Food’ to ‘Past Food.’