Some of my happiest memories from my bachelor days are centred around the few months I spent in the early seventies in Bhubaneswar as a trainee in a bank. Life essentially began after office and as the sun went down (the weather was pleasant round the year) we began imbibing the stuff that cheers. This went on till nearly 10 pm, when suddenly, in a burst of activity, we rushed to the club to order a few drinks before closing time.
Thoroughly well lighted, around 11 pm we set out for food which took us to a dhaba at nearby Rasulgarh on the highway. The meat was tough but the chapatis, which came in quick succession, were hot and soft. Then the fun would begin as I would insist, "I want dessert, I want mithai."
The only place where you could get mithai at that hour was Pahala, some distance away. It was an amazing place, a veritable rasgulla factory, with the sweet being boiled in huge kadhais. If you are a rasgulla buff you will know they are best had just off the chullah, still hot, at their least sweet when they have not absorbed the syrup in which they will stay and lose a little bit of their softness. The hot rasgulla is not just tasty but therapeutic, recommended as a home remedy for diarrhea. After it was all over, my ever indulgent Odia friends would shake their heads in mock despair and say, "What shall we do with this Bongali with his sweet tooth!"
With such memories I cannot but be thoroughly bemused by the noise being generated in the adjoining states of West Bengal and Odissa over where, arguably, this king of mithai was first invented. The culprit is this modern day nuisance called "geographical indication" (GI). Whichever area gets to register a home-grown product name in its favour, gets the sole right to market it round the world under that name. Only a rasgulla coming out of the area owning the GI for it can be called a rasgulla. Just as many can produce sparkling white wine but only the stuff from the Champagne district of France can be marketed as champagne.
Bengalis have always thought that their favourite sweet was invented by the confectioner Nobin Chandra Das in the nineteenth century. In fact, the national joke is that the Bengali penchant for making a rounded pronunciation out of every word is the result of popping in too many of the rounded sweets, pronounced by them as rashogolla. Every time someone opens the mouth, it automatically adopts an 'O' formation, ready for a rasgulla.
But Odias will have none of this. The sweet, their ancient manuscripts say, has been a standard offering at the Jagannath temple for centuries. Legend has it that Lord Jagannath invented the sweet to mollify his wife Lakshmi who had shut the door on him for being away for too long after rathyatra.
Does it matter who owns the GI for rasgullas? They are not a major item of export as, say, Darjeeling tea. Also, most of the mithai trade in the two states is unorganised. Let whoever owns the GI for rasgullas do so. At your local mithai shop and mine, you will ask for and get a rasgulla without fuss or fear of officialdom.
The controversy is meaningless because it goes against the spirit of the rasgulla, which only makes anyone coming into contact with it happy. Once you have ended a fight you cement the new friendship by sharing rasgullas. I have no doubt that if the Indian and Pakistani delegations had exchanged rasgullas after each negotiating session then peace between the two countries would have come long ago.
If the fight continues for too long then before the image of the rasgulla begins to sour it will be possible to structure a game or two which will show how cooperation pays. You can put a plate of rasgullas between two disputants and tell them that they cannot touch it until they come to an agreement and if they cannot then the plate will be taken away.
Or if an elaborate negotiation over many aspects of an issue has to be worked out clause by clause then the process can begin with an empty plate between the negotiators. As they agree on the first clause, they get two rasgullas to share. When the second clause if finalised, they each get one rasgulla more. As soon as agreement falters, the rasgullas stop coming. I firmly believe that the negotiators, being sensible people, will at one stage say, "To hell with the GI, let's do what makes life good - enjoy the rasgullas."
Then they can end the negotiations by agreeing that the GI for rasgullas will stretch across both the states, shake hands, burp and go home in peace, maybe with a handi of rasgullas each for the respective families.
Disclaimer: These are personal views of the writer. They do not necessarily reflect the opinion of www.business-standard.com or the Business Standard newspaper
