Idli does it

Illustration/Uday Mohite

Yes, it's true. A restaurant in Bengaluru, home city of KFC yaniki Karnataka Fried Chicken, has invented idli on an ice cream stick, because pyaar tera sancha. Basically an idli shaped to look like a popsicle, it has been photographed on a steel plate shaped to look like a banana leaf. One idli stick is artfully dipped in a katori of sambhar alongside, like a swimsuit model angling her leg - in case you did not get the benefit of the innovation.

Predictably, there has been some mournful handwringing on Twitter. Dukh and resignation ki why can't you leave the idli alone it seems. Personally, I was relieved because in bleak times there is some grim reassurance in knowing that meaningless debates about food are the same as ever. They usually revolve around authenticity, mother's cooking, memories of paper boats in rain puddles and other etcetera nonsense about golden pasts and toast toast na raha, gutter mein gaya presents, or, as one person tweeted, if petrol prices are going up, government is spying on us, farmers are still on strike, why not idli on a stick?

It's like the erotica versus porn debate - let's call it the food porn versus food scorn debate. Much of food scorn just boils down to real estate - from New York, innovations are interesting, from Ghatkopar, ludicrous. I would really like to know where these moist-eyed eaters are eating their authentic food? In some dark, wooden interior lit only by the gleam of brass thalis? Have they never eaten button idlis? Fried idlis? Idli with fried egg? No wonder they are so morose in the thayir sadam of their lives, oblivious to the fact that the food historian KT Acharya suggested that idlis actually came to India from Indonesia. Another theory has it that they were brought to India by Arabs.

Anyway, the rest of us have been cheerfully scoffing every new food conceit we can, from spring dosas to namkeen French toast to schezwan vada pav and cheese parathas. Idli on a stick may gesture to convenience, but in truth, it belongs to the category of food refashioned mostly for style purposes, yaniki, because you can. It is the tornado potato of batter foods, an advanced version of salad carving really - beetroot duckies and carrot carnations ka baap. It's like something that might have been the Eve's Weekly recipe of the week, once the aspiration of every modern but traditional housewife. Like jooda with fringe, foods like bhakri pizza demonstrate openness to modernity and change with a dash of thrift, just as vodka golgappas show that Punjabis can sometimes hold their drink, with a dash of wink.

And for those who have had too much to drink, there is always doodh Fanta, or doodh Sprite, for the acidic morning after, a drink especially popular across the border as an iftar drink - and among many of my friends who are Gulf returned.

However, if you want to live on the edge, then to Gujarat you must go. Gujaratis have reverse colonised the world's foods - from Rangoon to Oaxaca. Dhokla pizza? Khandvi sandwich? Baked beans tacos? Salsa-e-dhokla? Maggi jalapeno poppers? You got it, baby. Got the daring for a Coca Cola or Fanta omelette in Surat? No? Chal, why don't you try an idli on a stick.

Paromita Vohra is an award-winning Mumbai-based filmmaker, writer and curator working with fiction and non-fiction. Reach her at paromita.vohra@mid-day.com