Food For Thought

 

Kunal Vijaykar must be a worried man. Who would have imagined that his rather innocuous TV series on restaurants across India, will turn out to be a vital ingredient for a political storm? In fact, Vijaykar has done many political satire gigs with Cyrus Bharucha for The Week That Wasn't and The News That Wasn't, but stayed clear of any major controversies.

The programme in question was his visit to a restaurant named ‘Silly Souls’, run by Union Minister Smriti Irani’s daughter Zoish. It looked like one of those fine dining restaurants located in suburban Goa, which also calls itself a “Southeast Asian & Italian Restaurant and Bar” offering an eclectic fare ranging from seafood to pork to beef.

The programme got aired without much ado a few months ago and the minister later was quoted by a website saying she was proud of her daughter’s achievements. Trouble broke out when the restaurant got caught up in a controversy regarding its bar licence. It was issued in the name of a person who died a year ago.

This was a Godsend opportunity for the Congress party and it was quick to fire potshots at Irani. She tried to deny the allegations and even held a press conference to say that her daughter was a college student, and the Congress party was doing all this because she had taken on the Gandhi family. The presser got wide coverage in the government-friendly mainstream media. 

But all her spirited defence came unstuck thanks to Vijaykar’s video and Irani’s own earlier statement praising her daughter for her entrepreneurship. Her detractors are having a field day sharing these two widely on social media.

Her supporters, meanwhile, are a bit wary to back her as firstly they see her on a weak wicket with she herself endorsing the restaurant, and secondly, the issue involves alcohol, beef and pork - not kosher to their saatvik sensibilities.

People generally steer away from politics and crime reporting and opt for food and lifestyle reporting to keep controversies at bay. But no such relief for Vijaykar - His food video has become an innocent cause for a political blood sport.

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Goa: Weighed Down by Desi Beats

Goa has been a land of languid charm. It is how it has been picturized in cartoons by Mario Miranda and mainstream Bollywood movies. While early Bollywood movies had easy going happy-go-lucky anglo-Indian characters longing to go back to Goa, or some wine drinking, cigarette smoking vamp with names like Suzy or Rosy (often played by Helen), who stood as a foil to the sanskari heroines; the new ones show new age millennials from Mumbai and other cities heading to its famous beaches to let their hair down.

I never had the fortune to visit Goa during its halcyon day of the 1970s, the high noon of its much-vaunted hippie counter-culture, as I was still in school. The now-defunct Illustrated Weekly of India and Caravan, in its earlier avatar, used to sometimes carry photo features of hedonistic life in Goa, the annual carnival and the King Momo.

It stood in stark contrast to the social mores, steeped in prudery, of the rest of the country. As if to make up for all that monkish deprivation, now every domestic tourist visiting Goa hopes to see the fruition of the fantasy he had nurtured after seeing those magazines or watching films.

Though the emergence of Kerala and coastal Karnataka as tourism destination took some sheen off Goa, the erstwhile Portuguese colony still retains its charm as its society is more open and permissive than in other parts of India, especially with regard to dressing and drinking.

While it has been a repeat holiday destination for many, I happened to go there only twice - first in the 1990s and then this year. In the 90s itself, it was facing the onslaught of domestic tourists(especially those from the cow belt), but Goa back then was somehow holding on to its Western ethos. Moreover, those were early days of satellite television and the hold of MTV and Channel V was quite strong.

During the evening boat cruise on Mandovi river at Panjim, the musicians back then used to play the popular MTV pop chart busters such as Cecilia, the boy bands - Backstreet Boys and Boyzone and of course Michael Jackson.

The audience comprised people from the rest of India with some extended families, including grandparents in some cases, and north Indian newlywed couples with women wearing the traditional red and white bangles right up to elbows. It used to be a pretty uptight affair with the audience listening or foot tapping as the musicians played along.

Even the dress code observed by domestic tourists back then was pretty formal with most women wearing salwar kameez and men clad in shirts and trousers or jeans. Skin show? - Leave it to foreigners.

The boat cruise this year was a boisterous affair, bordering on riotousness, with DJs belting out latest tapori Bollywood numbers, the one to which a Ranveer Singh or Arjun Kapoor may gyrate to on screen and the crowd was more than eager to shake a leg. The compere was talking only in Hindi and exhorting them to come to the stage as they have come to Goa to 'enjoy'.

The dress code too had undergone a drastic change. Young brides still adhered to traditional red and white bangles, but salwar kameez and sarees have given way to tank tops, capris and even hot pants, to make the most of the short respite from Sanskari mores of their home towns. There were also much fewer extended families in sight.

Another major game changer was the mobile phone. My last visit was during pre-cellphone and even pre-digital camera days. One had to keep in mind the number of clicks and the exposures left on the film roll. 

Hence narcissism back then was purely mirror-centric and the word selfie was not even coined. But now thanks to smartphones and social media it has spilled over to the streets and every public place. In short, the selfie affliction has reached pandemic proportions. Every hawker or knick-knack seller had a small stock of selfie sticks to cash in on this obsession.

The beaches were swarming with those looking for the fulfillment of their long-held fantasies triggered by yesteryear movies like Dum Maaro Dum or Dil Chahta Hai, or more recent Dear Zindagi. I visited the Candolim beach (it happened to be a Sunday) and it resembled Mumbai's Chowpatty Beach during Ganesh immersion festivities or Chennai's Marina Beach on Kaanum Pongal. With free-flowing alcohol unshackling them from their repressions, the crowd was noisy and unruly, with some ugly brawls thrown in.

While driving through Goa I was quite fascinated to see some old tiled roof mansions with Portuguese sounding names beginning with words like 'Casa' and 'Cidade'. But like most ancestral homes they were well past their glory days. Some were so dilapidated that they gave the impression that no human habitation has taken place for decades. They had missing roofing tiles, moss-ridden walls and the front courtyard had lavish toppings of dry leaves accumulated over the years.

The whole state seems to have turned into a road contractors' Mecca with road widening, concretization in full swing in many stretches. I was also quite baffled by the number of flyovers being built, though the traffic volumes on Goa's streets and highways seemed hardly compelling enough to warrant it.

The copious Mandovi river already has two bridges and now a third one was complete. With pillars 15 metres taller than that of existing bridges, this cable-stayed bridge looks too imposing and appears to be a clone of the famous Golden Gate bridge of San Francisco. I am sure that for future tourists it is going to be a mandatory prop for photo ops.

However, concerns are being raised about its environmental impact as the starting ramp of the bridge at one end begins on a mangrove. Moreover, some construction experts have raised doubts about whether the bridge will be able to cope with the 'wind load', especially during monsoon months when the wind speeds are high.

Lastly, those who are fond of fish and seafood, Goa is a place worth checking out as the options are sumptuous. Burp!

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