Bad food memories

SOCIETY

Now that we are almost past the season for fasting and feasting "" okay, mostly feasting "" you may be feeling just a little blue.

Post-Diwali depression is, after all, a fairly well established and documented phenomenon and quite a few ladies I know (not mentioning the one on my right) clutch on to it resolutely every year to burn up some more credit. But you don't really need to indulge in retail therapy to tide over the disappointment of being past the festival season.

And if you are still missing the days of unabashed indulgence, I suggest you sit back in a deep armchair and think of all the unpleasant morsels that you have had to stuff yourself with in the name of the festive spirit and social niceness. ( I have tried this experiment very successfully with the husband; every inconvenient time when he utters the word "kebabs", I cunningly counter it with "goulash".

The memory of a poorly-assembled Hungarian stew is so overwhelming, that he tamely sits down to whatever meagre vegetarian stuff we have spread out before us.)

"So, what is the worst food you've ever had?" I ask the editor of this supplement for purpose of research. "The worst?" he searches, and then decides, "It has to be a Swedish food festival."

The Swedes "" even while acknowledging Indian spices "" were apparently so bland that Indian guests secretly emptied their plates under the table at this dinner.

"We at least ate some of it because we were very hungry by then." But that's not the worst really, the editor remembers another, recent, instance when "friends" served up stale desi khana at a cards party this Diwali. "The paneer was green!"

"The worst", giggles Devi Cherian, Delhi's most affable party-goer, "who do I name?" I assure her it is not necessary to name names, just tell us about the food and she talks about people serving readymade koftas bought from the bazaar and passing them off as home-made gushtabas.

Besides, "the new rich try to serve everything, from Chinese to Continental to Indian and haleem is the latest fad, which very few people know how to make in Delhi."

As bad food memories come tumbling out, friends remember stale fish (served at a prominent bookstore during a book discussion) and I relive my own indignation at a blue-cheese potato roll (what a waste) served up during a high-profile book launch at the Taj Mahal hotel recently. But my political friend is the one who is distressed the most.

"Yes, iftars are back," she announces, referring to the get-together hosted by the PM recently "" after a lull in the past, where parties had been cancelled due to the tsunami and bomb blasts leading to much conjecture vis-a-vis minorities and policies "" "but I wish the food was more than very average shaadi khaana."

At Dr Singh's party apparently kebabs were greatly missed; at Ram Vilas Paswan's get together it was Laloo Prasad Yadav who got undivided attention rather than a huge pile of sad-looking fried chicken, and the BJP gave the whole iftar business a miss. "Why?" I ask, wide-eyed, after all, Mr Vajpayee had held a delicious do only last year.

"They have probably given up on the Muslim votebank," sighs my knowledgeble friend, who still wishes for Venkaiah Naidu to get his old job back solely because the former BJP president kept a good table "" full of prawns from his farm!

And so a day (or two, depending on where you've sighted the moon) after Eid, we sigh for the good old days, full of sheermals and phirnis and shamis made by elusive old Delhi cooks, most famously brought in by Rukhsana Sultan, actress Amrita Singh's mother.

"One or two are still alive", says Devi Cherian. "Really?" I ask, gleefully, only to realise that this is supposed to be an exercise in banishing calories from our gym-going bodies and feasts from our sybaritic minds.