21st century got up with a jerk by globalisation. Old pattern of specific time eating got changed totally and food at anytime took the place. Biological rhythm got changed and man became mad after food and money.
Whether farmers are dying for want of water is not our concern, our dining tables are getting filled with what we call as exotic food, whether palatable or not.
Just dial and within a specific time taken as a challenge the food arrives. All one has to do is eat from the box if in a hurry or spread over the plates if there is patience.
The eating out is a fashion, we claim, but it’s due to lack of time and lack of space. Lack of time as we are all in a new concept of 24 x 7 and we are having an umbilical connection with internet and we are in different time zones. The 4minute duration in latitude was a calculation studied in geography and it came to everyman’s doorstep only rather very late when their siblings started flying.
Now even a lady who sells vegetables talks about it. Fast food centres and slow digestion ESG techniques are neighbours.
Now we are chewing the taste of world as burgers, pizzas and as Oriental and Continental dishes.
The names like apricot and plums were not known to me till my 40’s and foods like baby corns and dried tomatoes were words beyond my imagination.
A pure south Indian villager that ‘I, had not seen any food other than that my mother cooked till I left my shores. My mother’s ‘cast Iron Cheeni chatty’ vaRuval of thayir miLagaai and square yaam pieces has changed its name to ‘grill’, the flying smoke that emanates when the server brings it on to my table in a star hotel. Likewise the appalaa kuchi became skewer and bronze kooja with coffee kept inside the embers became Crock-Pot.
Now drones take the order and serve the food through the window of your 150th floor cocoon size house.
I was taken aback when I saw the photogenic pics of Aussie barbecue, Indi tandoori, African Peri peri, Jamaican Jerk spice, English Cheddar on the front page of my newspaper, all together beckoning me. I was thinking whether all the nine planets have come closer to wave me with lady luck at this very old age.
When our cows were giving milk from their sprawling cattle sheds, I was enjoying the taste of pure milk. Now I have to satisfy with tetra pack milk kept in fridge with a shelf life of six months, as we say old is gold.
Next in line will be ‘Catch your food sitting inside your car. The hotels on the highways will be ready with the food pack and you have to order on line and tell the time you pass over that point and your vehicle number.
See the old pattern of key changing of trains in stations have taken a full circle. So wait and catch and bite and eat! Get the training from a kennel club or from a ring master.
Marie Antoinette once said: If bread is not there eat cake. How true it is now!
My seven year old grandson born and brought up in Germany was chewing and biting something. I asked what it is and he quipped ‘les bonbons d’arachide’. Poor boy did not know that it was the groundnut soaked in jiggery that his grandfather had chewed and phewed years ago. That is the present world.
By Sundareswaran Date: 24th March 2019.
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