You know these cooking shows where the host will say 'Mmmmmmm' even before he/she has got the spoon anywhere close to their mouths, and how they will go on endlessly on how the kitchen at their end of the camera smells, and how wonderful this cook they have chosen on their show is? Well Vir Sanghvi will have none of that!!
On his show he goes deeply into food. Food is not just to be treated in a superficial manner. It is the very life source. What you put in is what you put out. Now please go beyond the literality of that statement, but it's true. We eat god knows how much without a thought into what we put into our mouths. But it is afterall this food which breaks down to the energy which becomes the output of all our actions. And this guy treats food with that reverence. Food on his programme is not just about the sensuality of the affair, as it is reduced to in most programmes. But he combines that gastronomical sensuality, with the history and cultural value of food.
A tandoori chicken doesn't only become an object of voyeuristic pleasures, but he will tell you how it came to be, and how it has travelled forth hence. Infact the other day he introduced on his show the man who invented 'Gobi Manchurian'. I told my mother this, and she disbelieves that there could be such a person. She, like many of us, has always imagined gobi manchurian to have been here since the first amoeba split into two or it just came into being by some mysterious force. I like it when people go deep into things.
And I love a man who can speak his mind. Not for him the mindless 'ummmm'ing and 'awww'ing. He will tell you when your dish is nice. He likes subtle flavours, so do I. And he will with his subtlety tell you when you stink. When he covered Indian Chinese food on his show, he also tasted of the roadside chinese food in Delhi. I've had it with hosts who romanticise this street food business; come on, I think to myself, for you it may be a romantic fantasy to eat with the roadside walahs, but for many it is an everyday matter, so what is with this elitist fuss one kicks up about the joy hidden in the recesses of a roadside puchchka. Anyways, I apologize for divulging in personal frustrations. As I was saying Vir Sanghvi ate from this cart of Chinese Chaat, he then said 'skdhfeu' and walked up to the chef, shook his hand and said 'Long may they curse you in China'!.
I just realised a strange phenomenon, I think for the first time, I could be a fan!Or maybe not true to the word, because I don't even know at what time the show airs. I have just magically discovered it between my endless channel surfing. I have seen only halves of two episodes so far. One on the Indo-Chinese food and the other on the Tandoori chicken.
But I love the show, because the food makes me weak in the knees, and I hang on hungrily to every word the man says, and I guffaw when things like this happen: Indian chef, famous in U.K for establishing the Chicken Tikka Masala, cooks it on the show, our host tastes a spoonful and says "You maybe a very good cook, but that it absolutely revolting"!
6/19/2007
6/14/2007
Paradoxes
She reads the letter from a faraway land
The soldier's words bring tears to her eyes
The child licks on a razor blad dipped in honey
In love pain and joy are not separate
-Jan and Ash's Chinese poem
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I was working with a campaign to end violence against women sometime ago, and our main focus was domestic violence. Domestic violence being the violence, emotional or physical , one suffers at the hands of one's near and dear one's. The violence of loved ones.
As part of my work I had to conduct workshops for young people ,who would then design their own material to talk about this issue with their peers. For this purpose, I gathered posters of work against domestic violence, from as many countries as I could. I would then screen the posters one-by-one and ask the group to react on whether they think the kind of message on the poster appealed to them, and if they thought that they could use these kind of messages for their own discussion materials.
Once in a small town called Bhawanipatna, in this obscure rock-oven of a district called Kalahandi, in Orissa, we had organized a workshop where I met this guy who left an impression.
The group for the workshop was enthusiastic, and we set in with work immediately. We went through poster by poster and the group was forthcoming about their reactions to the same.
I particularly liked an African poster of this strong woman with her hand raised to the sky, with the words " We are a rock, a boulder, if you touch us you will be crushed". Because I was personally fed up with material, especially from some parts of South Asia, where the posters had extremely morbid and scary pictures of tortured women and pleas to end the violence. How could one end it I thought when the poster itself seemed to re-inforce these images. This poster of this strong woman standing to fight back seemed enticing to me. But the group, fed on a healthy dose of Gandhism, said that one could not fight violence with violence.
I shrugged my shoulders and put up the next poster. It was from the U.S.A, it had a picture of a heart with a bandage across, and the words "Love is not supposed to hurt". After translating what it meant in my struggling Hindi, the group went "Ahhhhhhh" and everyone nodded. And a girl right in front said, that this appealed to her, because love is supposed to be so wonderful and not the kind where the man hits the woman to show her that he loves her. There was a general consensus and everyone agreed that this kind of message was strong and one which we could use.
But then right from behind, a guy who had not spoken yet, but who in the tea-breaks would go into the corner to practice his cricket shots with his imaginary bat, raised his hand. He hesitated before saying "But .......love hurts, when I look at this girl I'm in love with in class... and .....she doesn't look back, it hurts. When I want to speak to her so badly........... and I can't, it hurts. When I see her sit with other people for lunch, I hurt deeply inside. When I feel .......that maybe ........she will never know how much I love her, nothing hurts me more".
Few in the group tried to supress giggles, but I had a lump in my throat as I looked at this boy with new eyes. But at the end of that discussion the group decided that they dint think that poster was appealing, as someone then said "Dil tho aakhir dil hain na, meethi si mushkil hain na".
That workshop happened sometime ago, but I look back fondly at that conversation, because it taught me something deep. That though certain things are clear to define, one cannot get carried away with definitions alone.
(PS- I am very wary about publishing this post, because it is vague and has a message which could be misconstrued. Let's please discuss before opinions are formed)
The soldier's words bring tears to her eyes
The child licks on a razor blad dipped in honey
In love pain and joy are not separate
-Jan and Ash's Chinese poem
-------------------------------------------------------------------
I was working with a campaign to end violence against women sometime ago, and our main focus was domestic violence. Domestic violence being the violence, emotional or physical , one suffers at the hands of one's near and dear one's. The violence of loved ones.
As part of my work I had to conduct workshops for young people ,who would then design their own material to talk about this issue with their peers. For this purpose, I gathered posters of work against domestic violence, from as many countries as I could. I would then screen the posters one-by-one and ask the group to react on whether they think the kind of message on the poster appealed to them, and if they thought that they could use these kind of messages for their own discussion materials.
Once in a small town called Bhawanipatna, in this obscure rock-oven of a district called Kalahandi, in Orissa, we had organized a workshop where I met this guy who left an impression.
The group for the workshop was enthusiastic, and we set in with work immediately. We went through poster by poster and the group was forthcoming about their reactions to the same.
I particularly liked an African poster of this strong woman with her hand raised to the sky, with the words " We are a rock, a boulder, if you touch us you will be crushed". Because I was personally fed up with material, especially from some parts of South Asia, where the posters had extremely morbid and scary pictures of tortured women and pleas to end the violence. How could one end it I thought when the poster itself seemed to re-inforce these images. This poster of this strong woman standing to fight back seemed enticing to me. But the group, fed on a healthy dose of Gandhism, said that one could not fight violence with violence.
I shrugged my shoulders and put up the next poster. It was from the U.S.A, it had a picture of a heart with a bandage across, and the words "Love is not supposed to hurt". After translating what it meant in my struggling Hindi, the group went "Ahhhhhhh" and everyone nodded. And a girl right in front said, that this appealed to her, because love is supposed to be so wonderful and not the kind where the man hits the woman to show her that he loves her. There was a general consensus and everyone agreed that this kind of message was strong and one which we could use.
But then right from behind, a guy who had not spoken yet, but who in the tea-breaks would go into the corner to practice his cricket shots with his imaginary bat, raised his hand. He hesitated before saying "But .......love hurts, when I look at this girl I'm in love with in class... and .....she doesn't look back, it hurts. When I want to speak to her so badly........... and I can't, it hurts. When I see her sit with other people for lunch, I hurt deeply inside. When I feel .......that maybe ........she will never know how much I love her, nothing hurts me more".
Few in the group tried to supress giggles, but I had a lump in my throat as I looked at this boy with new eyes. But at the end of that discussion the group decided that they dint think that poster was appealing, as someone then said "Dil tho aakhir dil hain na, meethi si mushkil hain na".
That workshop happened sometime ago, but I look back fondly at that conversation, because it taught me something deep. That though certain things are clear to define, one cannot get carried away with definitions alone.
(PS- I am very wary about publishing this post, because it is vague and has a message which could be misconstrued. Let's please discuss before opinions are formed)
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