The Art Of Culinary Diplomacy

Last weekend, I had the pleasure of tasting some very good food served by a local caterer. One of the dishes was a wee bit too salty, but the lunch was overall extremely good. I remembered a Tamil phrase that I've heard from older ladies in my family, and it got me thinking about some subtle aspects of culture.

In the Mahaabhaarata, one comes across the characters NaLa and Bheema. In addition to their other heroic qualities, both men were reputed to be very good cooks, so much so that an ancient book of recipes (Paaka darpana, or "cooking mirror") is attributed to NaLa.

NaLa (as Baahuka) and Bheema (as Vallabha) doing their culinary thing

Now here's the twist. Although both men were said to be excellent cooks, NaLa's cooking had just an extra hint of salt, and Bheema's cooking was just a tad sweeter than optimal.

When discussing someone's cooking, I've heard people in my family use the Tamil phrase "NaLa paakam" (more colloquially, "NaLa baaham"), or Nala's cooking, to mean that the food had too much salt in it, and "Bheema baaham" to mean that it was too sweet.

In fact, I was told it was a diplomatic way to provide feedback while praising someone's cooking. Congratulating someone on their cooking by comparing them to NaLa or Bheema was a form of praise that also gently hinted to them to hold the salt or sugar the next time around.

Thoughts About Identity

I came across this picture on Facebook today and it made me think about my consciousness of my own identity.

Sami Ahmad Khan has stated poetically what I have unconsciously felt for a long time. 

Right from my childhood, I have at various times been conscious of being a Tamilian in Karnataka, a brahmin in Tamil Nadu, a South Indian in Bombay, Ahmedabad and Kanpur, as well as a Hindu and an Indian in the UAE and Australia. Throughout my life, I have always had the slightly uncomfortable sense of belonging to a minority and of having to keep my head down to avoid drawing attention to my minority identity. On occasion, in each of these environments, I have had to endure my community being slandered in my presence while feeling powerless to speak up.

I have also briefly been in a place where "my kind" was in the majority (CMC Ltd, Madras), and I hated it. The conformity that was implicitly demanded offended my sensibilities. In my own mind, I have a complex and hybrid identity that refuses to be slotted into any box.

I therefore believe that Utopia is a place where *everyone* is in a minority. This isn't unachievable. My first place of work (CMC Ltd, Bombay) was almost exactly such a place. No linguistic/regional group dominated, not even Maharashtrians. There were almost as many women as men in all roles including management (My first two bosses were women). And while it was majority Hindu, there were quite a few Muslims, Christians, Zoroastrians, Jains and Sikhs in the office to prevent that from becoming a stifling cultural presence.

Hopefully, sharing my background will allow people to understand where I come from whenever I wade into the culture wars as a "liberal".

The Etymology of a Name

I attended a technical talk today by a person with the unusual surname of Velummylum. Given that his first name (Piragash) sounded like the Tamil rendering of a Sanskrit word ("Prakash" - Light), I looked closer at the surname to see if that was a Tamil word as well.

Tamil has no simple conjunction word for "and". If you wanted to say, "The Ant and the Grasshopper", you would have to say, "Ant-um Grasshopper-um" (with the Tamil equivalents for Ant and Grasshopper substituted, of course).

So Velummylum on first analysis, seemed to be "Velum Mylum" (வேலும் மயிலும்), i.e., the Vel and the Myl. Now Vel (pronounced 'vale') means 'spear' in Tamil and Myl (pronounced 'mayil') means 'peacock'.

"The Spear and the Peacock" may still not mean much to a non-Tamil even when translated, but the symbolism is very clear to a Tamil. They are the symbols of Lord Murugan, the Tamil name for Kartikeya, the warlord god born to Shiva and Parvati to destroy the demon Tarakasura. The spear is his weapon, and the peacock is his mount or vehicle ("Vahana"). Every Hindu god or goddess seems to have a favourite weapon and a particular animal or bird as their mount.

I'm told there is a very famous devotional song "Velum Mayilum Thunai" (Succour of Spear and Peacock), an allegorical appeal to Lord Murugan's protection.

I thought I'd dig around the web for some nice pictures of Murugan. Here's a traditional one, the kind that I would see in shops and homes during my childhood holiday visits to Madurai, where my grandmother lived. The peacock holds down a serpent, symbolic of all kinds of evil in human nature, I guess.

This is the version by Raja Ravi Varma, the famous Indian artist who was influenced by the Dutch portraitist Theodor Jenson. [The fusion of classical Indian and Dutch Impressionist styles made Raja Ravi Varma one of India's greatest artists. As Aatish Taseer rightly observed in the novel "Stranger to History" that I reviewed, the world is richer in its hybrids.] This version shows Murugan in his six-headed form with two consorts and lots of different weapons. The serpent is bigger than before, but the peacock seems to have the situation under control.

Here's a more modern rendition that I really like. I couldn't tell who the artist was, but here's the site I got it from. They missed the serpent, though.

It's the story of my life. I set out to learn about technology, then get drawn into even more interesting research into linguistics, culture, religion and art!

Reflections on Culture and Tradition

I had a powerful experience yesterday when shopping at the Arpico supermarket in Colombo. The counter clerk was a friendly and smart-looking youth. When I handed him my credit card, he took it with his right hand, and with his left hand holding his right elbow. The gesture brought back memories and feelings in a rush.

In 2000, when I applied for Australian citizenship, I was surprised when the Australian immigration officer (a Caucasian) took my passport with both hands. This is, of course, the (East) Asian way of showing respect. I guess he had been trained to be culturally sensitive because of the large number of East Asians applying for Australian citizenship. Although I immediately recognised the gesture as one of respect, I was not emotionally touched by it. However, when the youth at Arpico took my card in the respectful Tamil style, it touched and moved me, and this is why.

When taken to visit temples as a child, I was taught to throw flowers on the idol in an underarm movement using my right hand, with my left hand holding my right elbow. I don't know if this is prevalent in the rest of India or even in the rest of South India, but it is definitely part of Tamil culture. The left hand is considered unclean and must never be proffered to others, either to give or to receive anything. Only the right hand may be used in any transaction. This much is common to all of India. When great respect is to be shown, as when showering the idol of a deity with flowers, the left hand must support the right at the elbow. I believe this is a uniquely Tamil gesture.

The incident made me think a lot about my life, especially my ideological choices. In my late teens, when reading about communal riots and killings in the papers, I determined that religion was evil and nothing but superstition that led men astray. I was also studying engineering at the time, and I believed that science and reason were the answer. I guess I still do.

That started me on my journey of conscious agnosticism. I never became a communist, like many other idealistic students, but I did try to be a practising agnostic. This meant consciously violating rules that had been taught to me as part of my culture if they made no sense. I would whistle after sunset, I would ask people where they were going as they were leaving, I would openly blaspheme. (In later years, I would mock my wife for murmuring prayers in Sanskrit, "a language neither she nor God understood.") I inured myself to stepping on paper without flinching, and to moving books aside with my feet, conscious acts to defy Goddess Saraswathi's certain wrath. The heavens never opened to strike me dead, and I have remained an agnostic with a healthy aversion to organised religion. I even composed a couplet to summarise my philosophy:

There may or may not be a God
But religion is a fraud

It has been decades since I even thought about the respectful supported-elbow gesture, and the fact that a young man half my age, from my own culture, in another country, was keeping the tradition alive - no, living the tradition - made me think for a long time.

I have forged a powerful identity for myself by defining what I stand for and stand against, and this has made me what I am. Still, I found myself asking, have I gained or have I lost?