Our own foodie

THE FOOD CLUB

Because of a certain addiction to the subject of food and travel, recent weeks have seen me picking up several books on the topic. I've gagged after reading two or three chapters of each. The authors "" as well as the publishers "" are all American, so a certain sensibility creeps in.

I probably shouldn't be using words like strident and brassy, but the I'm-American-so-I-must-be-right tone does irk after a while. Also the fact that smug racial superiority gets quite a lot of people agitated, so after you've read a few stories, the books begin to acquire an air of Us Against Them.

It's not very different in television either: shows on food and travel invariably exoticise Asian countries, and they are made with a Western bias so that in spite of most of South-east Asia having populations of sophisticated English language readers and television viewers, we have to watch patronising shows of the "this is what the natives eat" variety.

Discovery Travel and Living have genuinely gone that extra mile to break the mould of Great White Man Slumming It In Third World. Many of their travel and food show hosts are Asian: a few are non-resident Indian. Australian-Chinese Kylie Kwong is a personal favourite, though I have a feeling that Vir Sanghvi will easily outpace her.

First of all, like all of us, Vir is Indian, and his sensibilities will be something that all his viewers can relate to, whether he holds forth on Darjeeling tea or on Bangalore's wine growers.

Secondly, because of his Indianness, and because of the fact that these programmes were commissioned in India, the country is not being exoticised.

And thirdly, you have to give it to him: he has the devil's own lucidity, and can hold your interest unwaveringly, whether he's writing about tremors in the Gujarat government or white truffle hunting in Alba.

The episode on the Sino-Ludhianvi school of Chinese food, a recurrent nightmare with Sanghvi, familiar to the readers of his Brunch column, illustrates several points simultaneously.

When he ventures into the Tangra home of a Chinese family on Chinese New Year, they are in the midst of their banquet. There's none of the traditional dishes that a Chinese family in, say, Hong Kong would have prepared but one that contains fried rice, fried noodles, chicken Manchurian and chilli chicken.

And the camera rests silently on a bowl of mishri-saunf. There's no voice-over for the shot. None is necessary. When even the Chinese in India have altered their own cuisine beyond recognition, is it any wonder that Lajpat Nagar Chinese chaat exists?

Witty, funny, hilarious, familiar, clever, intriguing, meticulously researched "" each episode will probably have some of us wishing that we have thought of it before he did: if I was ever asked to produce seven episodes on food and travel, I would never in a million years have considered writing about the cuisine of my old school, but that is exactly what Sanghvi has done.

marryamhreshii@yahoo.co.in