"Why on earth do you add turmeric powder?" would begin the argument from my side. "It adds its own flavor. Is it tasting bad?" would be my mother's counterargument. "It does not taste bad. But why do you add turmeric powder?" I would ask her again. She would shrug her shoulders and continue her work in the kitchen.
All this for a simple dal.
"In no other home would anyone fear so much for preparing just chapathi and dal!" my mother would often exclaim before beginning to prepare the same.
My mother's version of dal is one with chopped onion pieces, tiny tomato scrapings, a teaspoonful of turmeric powder, a few curry leaves, no chilies, no lemon essence, no coriander and no cumin seeds.
My version is one with huge tomato pieces, thin chili slices, a handful of cumin seeds, lemon essence added exactly to about 5 drops, a few closely chopped coriander leaves, no turmeric, no curry leaves and definitely no chopped onion.
And every time the dal boiled in our kitchen stove, an argument would arise even though never once has it stopped me from feasting on the chapathi and dal later.
And this small piece that I have typed above is not to mention as to how dal should be prepared but to put forth clearly how bad a foodie I am.
Food OCD, to be exact!
Being such a person, I always found it difficult to reject outright the food served at our hostel mess. I couldn't reject it sans any reason (though on many occasions, one look at the fatter-than-the-fattest oothapams and bite-me-if-you-can bread slices would warn you even from a mile) but I had to taste them and find out what had gone wrong. And by 'gone wrong', I do not mean the 'There seems to be no salt', 'The potato curry has not been roasted properly' level. It refers to a deeper analysis.
But coming to the point, on numerous occasions I had found the dishes served at the hostel mess - be it the curry or the sambar or the rasam or even the idlis (especially when they were soft with the hot steaming sambar poured over them) - to have had the ingredients in the exact proportions as it would have been made at my home but the taste seemed starkly different. The reaction the hostel mess dishes would evoke at that time were not of the same standards as the emotion evoked by the dishes with the same ingredients at my home.
When I told my grandmother about this, she gave a reply, typical of any Indian mother or grandmother.
"We prepare the dishes for you at home with a lot of affection. Do you expect that from the people who prepare the dishes at your hostel mess?"
The problem with being a science fanatic is that these emotional dialogues, though give a warm feeling for some time, lose their credibility soon and you start breaking your head. Why do the same dishes prepared with the same ingredients in possibly the same way not evoke the same reaction as the one at home? Does 'affection' really play a part?
These are not questions you can possibly discuss with your friends at hostel because the moment your friends realize that you are taking the mess food so seriously, it would indicate them that you have started losing your mind. The only option left would be to search about this baffling phenomenon online and you would not believe the results such a search returns (One of the most humorous results led me to a fantastic website).
But by a stroke of luck, I managed to get my hands on an amazing video today morning - a TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell (even the title of this post is a loose rip-off of the video's!).
The video was largely about Gladwell's description of how a man named Howard Moskowitz had helped considerably in giving a fresh life to the sphagetti sauce industry in the United States. But by the end of the video, he described so effortlessly the answer I had so strenuously been searching for. To quote Malcolm Gladwell's own words as he addressed the audience,
"If I were to ask all of you to try and come up with a brand of coffee - a type of coffee, a brew - that made all of you happy and then I asked you to rate that coffee, the average score in this room for coffee would be about 60 on a scale of 0 to 100.
If however, you allowed me to break you into coffee clusters, maybe three or four coffee clusters, and I could make coffee just for each of those individual clusters, your scores would go from 60 to 75 or 78. "
And he ended the talk by calling out for the embracing the diversity of humankind.
But it was the above quoted part that made me think.
When people know that the product is for everyone, the score is less. But when they realize that the product is designed specifically for them, the score rises significantly.
People wanted importance to be given to them.
I had read an article sometime ago where an analysis had been made as to why Apple surpassed every other leading tech organization in its sales and the reason that had been cited had been a simple one.
Apple focuses on a very small group - a group that it knows would not mind waiting for an entire cold night outside on a street to lay their hands on a newly released Apple product. And it designed products specifically for them. Which obviously others, not belonging to the group, wanted. The importance.
But most of the other tech competitors released products not meant for one group but for everyone. They wanted to attract a larger mass. But people often prefer less that which is meant for everyone. The importance.
And it all came together in my head.
The reason people preferred restaurants even when the dishes prepared there also are on a large scale.
The reason I felt that food back home gave a different feeling in comparison with the mess food even on occasions the dishes actually tasted good.
The importance.
Every one of us wants a product/dish specifically designed/prepared for us (though it is the same laptop or the same sambar).
Every one of us wants individual attention.
Every one of us wants importance to be given to us.
Every one of us, possibly, have a streak of babyhood throughout our lives.
With such a striking thought, I entered my hostel mess happily today afternoon. I knew now what was the reason behind my partiality for the mess food. I washed a plate and eagerly extended it for a small mountain of rice and had 4 spoonfuls of sambar poured over it, making my plate resemble an island supporting a rice volcano with the sambar lava flowing all around. I sat down at a table and mixing the rice well, I took a large handful of it and stuffed it in my mouth. About two munches later, I quickly gulped down the rice.
I immediately poured water in my mouth to wash down the remaining pieces that lay stuck to my tongue and stared helplessly at the small mountain that lay before me.
From then on, till the last handful of rice, I made sure that the rice went down my throat as quickly as possible without touching my tongue.
Guess affection does play a part in the taste! - I told myself as I washed my hands.
So much so for being a science fanatic.
All this for a simple dal.
"In no other home would anyone fear so much for preparing just chapathi and dal!" my mother would often exclaim before beginning to prepare the same.
My mother's version of dal is one with chopped onion pieces, tiny tomato scrapings, a teaspoonful of turmeric powder, a few curry leaves, no chilies, no lemon essence, no coriander and no cumin seeds.
My version is one with huge tomato pieces, thin chili slices, a handful of cumin seeds, lemon essence added exactly to about 5 drops, a few closely chopped coriander leaves, no turmeric, no curry leaves and definitely no chopped onion.
And every time the dal boiled in our kitchen stove, an argument would arise even though never once has it stopped me from feasting on the chapathi and dal later.
And this small piece that I have typed above is not to mention as to how dal should be prepared but to put forth clearly how bad a foodie I am.
Food OCD, to be exact!
Being such a person, I always found it difficult to reject outright the food served at our hostel mess. I couldn't reject it sans any reason (though on many occasions, one look at the fatter-than-the-fattest oothapams and bite-me-if-you-can bread slices would warn you even from a mile) but I had to taste them and find out what had gone wrong. And by 'gone wrong', I do not mean the 'There seems to be no salt', 'The potato curry has not been roasted properly' level. It refers to a deeper analysis.
But coming to the point, on numerous occasions I had found the dishes served at the hostel mess - be it the curry or the sambar or the rasam or even the idlis (especially when they were soft with the hot steaming sambar poured over them) - to have had the ingredients in the exact proportions as it would have been made at my home but the taste seemed starkly different. The reaction the hostel mess dishes would evoke at that time were not of the same standards as the emotion evoked by the dishes with the same ingredients at my home.
When I told my grandmother about this, she gave a reply, typical of any Indian mother or grandmother.
"We prepare the dishes for you at home with a lot of affection. Do you expect that from the people who prepare the dishes at your hostel mess?"
The problem with being a science fanatic is that these emotional dialogues, though give a warm feeling for some time, lose their credibility soon and you start breaking your head. Why do the same dishes prepared with the same ingredients in possibly the same way not evoke the same reaction as the one at home? Does 'affection' really play a part?
These are not questions you can possibly discuss with your friends at hostel because the moment your friends realize that you are taking the mess food so seriously, it would indicate them that you have started losing your mind. The only option left would be to search about this baffling phenomenon online and you would not believe the results such a search returns (One of the most humorous results led me to a fantastic website).
But by a stroke of luck, I managed to get my hands on an amazing video today morning - a TED talk by Malcolm Gladwell (even the title of this post is a loose rip-off of the video's!).
The video was largely about Gladwell's description of how a man named Howard Moskowitz had helped considerably in giving a fresh life to the sphagetti sauce industry in the United States. But by the end of the video, he described so effortlessly the answer I had so strenuously been searching for. To quote Malcolm Gladwell's own words as he addressed the audience,
"If I were to ask all of you to try and come up with a brand of coffee - a type of coffee, a brew - that made all of you happy and then I asked you to rate that coffee, the average score in this room for coffee would be about 60 on a scale of 0 to 100.
If however, you allowed me to break you into coffee clusters, maybe three or four coffee clusters, and I could make coffee just for each of those individual clusters, your scores would go from 60 to 75 or 78. "
And he ended the talk by calling out for the embracing the diversity of humankind.
But it was the above quoted part that made me think.
When people know that the product is for everyone, the score is less. But when they realize that the product is designed specifically for them, the score rises significantly.
People wanted importance to be given to them.
I had read an article sometime ago where an analysis had been made as to why Apple surpassed every other leading tech organization in its sales and the reason that had been cited had been a simple one.
Apple focuses on a very small group - a group that it knows would not mind waiting for an entire cold night outside on a street to lay their hands on a newly released Apple product. And it designed products specifically for them. Which obviously others, not belonging to the group, wanted. The importance.
But most of the other tech competitors released products not meant for one group but for everyone. They wanted to attract a larger mass. But people often prefer less that which is meant for everyone. The importance.
And it all came together in my head.
The reason people preferred restaurants even when the dishes prepared there also are on a large scale.
The reason I felt that food back home gave a different feeling in comparison with the mess food even on occasions the dishes actually tasted good.
The importance.
Every one of us wants a product/dish specifically designed/prepared for us (though it is the same laptop or the same sambar).
Every one of us wants individual attention.
Every one of us wants importance to be given to us.
Every one of us, possibly, have a streak of babyhood throughout our lives.
With such a striking thought, I entered my hostel mess happily today afternoon. I knew now what was the reason behind my partiality for the mess food. I washed a plate and eagerly extended it for a small mountain of rice and had 4 spoonfuls of sambar poured over it, making my plate resemble an island supporting a rice volcano with the sambar lava flowing all around. I sat down at a table and mixing the rice well, I took a large handful of it and stuffed it in my mouth. About two munches later, I quickly gulped down the rice.
I immediately poured water in my mouth to wash down the remaining pieces that lay stuck to my tongue and stared helplessly at the small mountain that lay before me.
From then on, till the last handful of rice, I made sure that the rice went down my throat as quickly as possible without touching my tongue.
Guess affection does play a part in the taste! - I told myself as I washed my hands.
So much so for being a science fanatic.
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