A banquet sans the food

A culinary journey is best undertaken to a well-appointed kitchen and back to an appreciative palate and growling stomach. Any attempts to meander will only subtract""especially an effort to tickle the mind.

Had Penguin titled this book "An eclectic collection of Indian writing on the act of eating", this reader might have approached it with other expectations.

Drawn by an attractive cover and a suggestive title, the doughty foodie opens the book with much enthusiasm. Prepared to trudge through a few hours and many miles of food, glorious food.

Alas, despite a smorgasbord of all the names that matter ""some like Salman Rushdie and Vir Sanghvi in double servings""A Matter of Taste, the Penguin Book of Indian Writing on Food becomes a somewhat mindless, if not tasteless trek.

It is ponderous reading at one go. Pick this and that from the various sections""helpfully arranged in the manner of an expansive menu card at the local multi-cuisine "resto bar" (Across the Seven Seas lists NRI-PIO writers!)""and you could just strike pay dirt.

Like choosing to read Amitav Ghosh's mo-mo moments in the Tibetan Dinner. Or Frank Simoes' investigation into all things feni: "Feni is not a generic term. It is a single, specific description from the Konkani root 'fen' literally 'to froth'. It indicates to the purists (just about all accomplished feni drinkers) that a great-hearted feni, when poured into a glass, should froth a bit, playfully, with just a hint of exuberance, a visual harbinger of the high spirits to come."

For the rest, in those pages there is the politics of religion, of geography, of culture, of indulgence and deprivation. But where is the food?

The authors, some of them anyway, make great reading""Amitav Ghosh, R K Narayan and Saadat Hasan Manto in one tome is an act hard to scoff at. But when food is subjected to gratuitous intellectualisation, both the stomach and the mind go hungry.

Rushdie is his clever self in the opener On Leavened Bread. The bread and water twist to the tale sets the pace for some interesting reading. But soon enough you are frowning at the editor's choice of Vir Sanghvi. The writer has far better wares in his Rude Food collection.

The idea, one gathers, is to present Indian writing on food, not to be confused with Indian writing on Indian food. Sanghvi's exposition on chaat and bhelpuri is certainly not representative of his more involved forays into food and what goes into the making of it.

Then there is Mahatma Gandhi's intense internal debate to eat or not to eat meat. Drama and moral dilemma there""ingredients for epic writing. But meat is not food, Rogan Josh is.

Get the point? Similarly, though many light years and many sensibilities away, Ruchir Joshi's Srikhand and Manjula Padmanabhan's The Diet belong to quite another anthology""one that is not called Indian writing on food.

Joshi obsesses with oral sex, Padmanabhan with not eating. At the risk of sounding repetitive, one has to ask, where is the food?

Take the kitchen of Mrs Sen, from the other Nilanjana, Jhumpa Lahiri's Pulitzer-winning stable. The expat's flirtations with halibut in her search for fresh fish are touching.

But wading through "a confetti of cucumber, eggplant, and onion skins" can only suggest: This is Mrs Sen, lonely Indian abroad. Not Mrs Sen about to let you into the secret of her impeccable Doi Maach.

Of course, we all have our weaknesses. Saadat Hasan Manto happens to be this reader's. That single-page sketch, scarcely 100 words, simply called Jelly, is the most effective inclusion in this collection. Still no food really, but in the spirit of things, very Manto. Kudos to the editor for picking that one.

This is not to take away from the effort that has gone into compiling the book. The editor Nilanjana S Roy has a smile as she brushes away credit in her introduction, "Occasionally, in a Herculean display of astonishing effort, she sends a passage to the photostat man in the market."

(Do people still say "Herculean display of astonishing effort"?) Effort to gather the who's who, there is. Roy believes she has made this "a homage to good reading as much as to good food." The good reading part we'll debate another time. But good food?

Let's put it this way. The adventures of the chicken that Rohinton Mistry's Gustad fattened in Such a Long Journey had delighted so many years ago.

This time around, when the capricious fowl finds its bloody end in Dilnavaz's kitchen, you are left looking for the hot Salli murg that should follow.

The epicure would probably do better to spend Rs 450 eating two meals at Karim's at Jama Masjid and trying to figure out what it is that gives the korma that consistency.

A matter of taste: The penguin book of Indian writing on food

Nilanjana S Roy (ed)
Penguin
Price:Rs 450;
Pages: xx+363