Subway Sandwiches and Biryani: What They Tell About Us
Two decades back, I landed in United States of America and soon found myself at a Subway. As I stood with the tray being passed forward through the chain of items that make a sandwich, I found myself, for the very first time, answering a bizarre set of questions — what kind of bread I wanted, the length, what fillings, what dressing, cheese etc.
For the first time, my food was being assembled in the same way parts are assembled in a factory. Each item I selected had a particular function and would lead to a specific customized taste. A taste that complemented and enhanced the narrative of my identity and personality. A process that would cement the “Uniqueness” of “I” and help darken the boundaries of me as an individual.
Of course, at the time I was being served, I ate as if it was a new adventure. Over the years, I have learnt to perceive the food in different ways.
Similarly, when I was introduced to the Salad of the West, I was quite okay with the taste. But puzzled with the process. All salad materials were separate, and you could choose to toss it with some dressing and top it off with cheese or seeds and nuts. If you looked at the bowl, each item was distinct with clear boundaries. You could choose to pierce a fork through the heart of a cherry tomatoe, into a cucumber and gather up some lettuce and crunch it in your mouth. And you know the flavour is because of a particular combination of salad materials.
I have looked at the salad often wondering how we also make a friends-group similarly. Choose X, Y, Z individuals and meet because the combo of three creates an ideal environment for a particular kind of meeting. Or how we choose partners — S personality will vibe well with B personality and be able to do x functions well together. “I want someone who is compatible andwith whom I can travel/party/celebrate/share…”
Assembling individuals into relationships like Burgers and Subway Sandwiches to provide a consistent always-always flavour. The factory at work everywhere with the intention of producing a ready-to-use product.
This is Industrialization of Human Beings. This is how we cease to be part of living systems and instead become materials ripe to be productivised.
I returned to India a decade back and with a fresh pair of eyes for Indian style of eating.
For example, growing up in my Tamilian household, in our steel plate, a mound of rice is served and then sambar or some gravy dish poured on top of the rice with a serving or two of vegetables on the side. After which we mix the rice with the sambhar with our fingers and begin to draw the vegetables into mix for each morsel.
With each new morsel, the mix changes — maybe you feel you want more veggies or perhaps more gravy or bit of papad. The vessels that contain sambhar or veggies are usually placed nearby so you can add more gravy or veggies as you need. And you keep altering the mix each time you fix a morsel.
This is Improvisation as you eat, an aliveness of the moment, an allowing for tastes to change as the eating progresses. No mix is perfect mix. The imperfection is inherent and calls for attention to the next morsel. The imperfection drives the improvisation and engagement with the food.
No item of the food is wholly independent of the other. The rice without gravy dish is a certain emptiness. The sambhar/gravy dish without rice is sans meaning. They need each other. The food makes sense only in the dynamics of their relationship. And their relationship is dependent on the relationship with the hand that is mixing them. Which in turn is dependent on the relationship of humans around the table. Which in turn is dependent on their relationships to the various communities around, the culture and economy and history and religion. A dependency weaved into multiple other dependencies.
And how would friendships be if it was an intricate dance, a new knowing, a turning, a giving, an opening, a leaning in, with each life moment. And how would it be if we ceased selecting romantic partners based on pre-assumed compatibility and instead leaned into the dance.
More recently, I have attended to the Biryani with a newborn care. The Biryani isn’t a 2-minute Maggi noodle. It is a carefully prepared flavoured rice with meat spice mix. How the meat is marinated with what combination of spices, how they are steamed in special vessels, so that they cook, as locals say, “in each other’s breath.” A biryani needs every element in it to be in an intricate dance and is not the result of the sum of parts, but through autopoiesis, a magical emergence.
Each element of the Biryani loses its individuality and merges with the fragrance of the other, an irretractable blending into the flesh of the other.
Like Love.
And I find it painful that instead of learning to cook it, we buy it in big packs via Swiggy/Zomato and consume it in few minutes, all the while commenting on which Biryani from which restaurant is better.
A food that is nurtured in exquisite care is packaged into a product for apathetic quick consumption. Like how friends become networks and love becomes a convenience or inconvinience.
What does it take to pour care and integrity in everything we do?
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