Until recently, my favourite place in the house was the kitchen: But these days I regard it as the most hazardous place on earth where food is garnished with religion to serve a heady mix of Hindutva.
My wife – I never suspected her of food fascism – is convinced that I sneak into the kitchen while she is away at work and cook such exotic, nay toxic things, as the famed Tunde ke kabab.
There is a veritable curfew in the vicinity of the fridge, where it is suspected I conceal lethal ingredients like minced meat; my wife, who is both a shakahari and sanskari – a lethal combination – flies into a rage if I am seen drifting in the direction of the kitchen. And in all this, I believe, she has the blessings of the RSS.
Sometime back it was all hunky-dory and the big argument on the dining table on Sunday mornings would invariably be about what to have for lunch. I would pitch for mutton korma and the wifey would generally oblige after a lengthy discourse on merits of embracing vegetables. But these days I dare not broach the subject lest a riot breaks out in the house.
The fault lines were always there – both children are also strictly vegetarian like their mother – but somehow I had managed to reconcile the differences. However, after Dear Yogi clamped the ban on illegal slaughter houses, all hell broke loose and the entire argument about a ‘secular’ all-inclusive diet ricocheted in my face.
The extent of domestic polarisation can be gauged from the fact that the children have passed a resolution that says I should be put on a staple diet of red kaddu and brinjal; In karela and bhindi is supposed to lie my salvation.
Mind you, I am the last person to carry my secular backpack into the house, least of all to the dining table. I have cited the Hindutva icon Veer Savarkar who had said that though one should have a feeling of gratitude towards an animal that is so useful to us, the matter should not have a tenacious hold on a nation’s intellect. I have further tried to reason that at this rate, the Hindutva controversy will soon be all about food: beef, onions and poha; I have tried to explain that the all-embracing Hinduism, which has assimilated hundreds of sects and faiths within its folds, is being undermined by its very proponents. I have pleaded that the intrinsic strength of Hinduism lies in tolerance, not segregation…Don’t we have enough of that in other religions?
But these arguments have been turned on their head and a narrative has been constructed around my ‘spurious nationalism’ and hints are being dropped that I should be deported to Gujranwala in Pakistan, where my ancestors used to graze cows.
I have tried to reason that I have nothing against the cow per se and I don’t even eat beef; I tried to establish my bonafides by pointing out that Guru Teg Bahadur had been beheaded by Aurangzeb over his campaign against cow slaughter, and that Maharaja Ranjit Singh had banned the killing of cows altogether. But this Yogi seems to hold my family in a kind of thrall and unless the spell weakens I should be turning a vegetarian very soon. Moreover, what is in question now is not just my daily meal but my moral and spiritual degradation.
As a first step in this direction, I have been administered a culinary vow and warned that if I cross the red lines, I may end up having a fixed tenure as a father; the kids and their mother apparently have a more sanskari and shakahari guy in mind.
The author is a former editor of The Free Press Journal.
