Kamala’s Chatpata Curry House

I was not aware that the White House had a smell or that American presidents brought their own smells into the building when they got the job. Illustration by C Y Gopinath using Midjourney

Once Kamala Harris becomes president of the United States, the White House, I am told, will smell of curry. This was revealed in a post on X from Donald Trump's latest consort, a wingnut called Laura Loomer. Her remark was deemed racist at once by both Republicans and Democrats. It was insulting, they said, to Kamala Harris's cultural heritage as part TamBram (her mother Shyamala Gopalan was from Chennai) and part Jamaican.

I had not known till then that the White House had a smell or that American presidents brought their own smells into the building when they got the job, so my head was reeling with trivial questions. Did Donald Trump's White House smell of quarter-pounder cheeseburgers and ketchup? Did that include Trump's signature bouquet, described by fellow Republican Adam Kinzinger as "armpits, ketchup, makeup and a little butt, all mixed up"?

As lifelong Indians, you and I know that Indian cuisine doesn't have curries, no matter how many dals, karhis, kurmas and dopiazas it has. In south India, which has contributed to Kamala Harris's genome, curry is spelt kari and refers to a dry vegetable dish. The closest a TamBram would get to anything curry-like might be a sambar.

Will Kamala Harris's White House smell like sambar?

Being a simpleton, I could not understand why anyone would be offended by a building that smelled as yummy as an Indian curry. Yet the message was unmistakable, and every white American got Laura Loomer's dog whistle - curry was not American, no matter how much you love Indian takeout. Haitians in Springfield were eating pet cats and dogs (not true!) because they were illegal aliens, not American. And if Kamala Harris was into curry, she was no better than them.

All of which brings me to food shaming and the difference between smell and taste.

As a young boy in Calcutta, I really disliked the smell of mustard oil. Bengalis not only cooked in it but they applied it on their skin and hair. Whatever good that did them, it made them pong most unpleasantly. Moving to Delhi, I noticed that most North Indians use mustard oil in cooking and daily life and apparently had no problems with its smell or taste. I was the odd one out.

There was an odd moment of self-awareness when I realised that after thoroughly relishing a lunch of rice and sambar off a plantain leaf, I did not equally relish the lingering food smell on my hands. Similarly, garlic was irresistible in a pickle or a Chinese stir fry but intolerable in a person's breath or under the fingernails. The same aroma that would make my mouth water when it came off a hot plate could make me cringe in a different setting.

Indian dishes have aggressive, in-your-face personalities, featuring strong-smelling spices that cling to curtains, wallpapers, towels, T-shirts and hair. There's no getting around it. Indian food is clingy.

Other eastern countries are not exempt. Thais have no illusions that the fish sauce they love to add to everything is obnoxious to the nose. To put it delicately, it stinks. Many Bangkok condos rent kitchen-free apartments to make cooking impossible, so that pungent fumes of fish sauce and garlic do not leak into lift lobbies and contaminate carpets.

Hopopo, a Reddit user in New Jersey, speaks for his nation when he writes: "I have several neighbours from India in my condo, and that shit stinks while being prepped."

But that's where trouble begins. When people are belittled and degraded by making fun of what they eat, haute cuisine becomes low politics. Because humans everywhere, it seems, have a thing for stinky foods, the West no less than the East; Europe and America no less than India and Thailand; white no less than black and brown.

The Irish were called ‘potato eaters'; the French were ‘frog-eaters'; Koreans, Chinese and Filipinos were mocked as ‘dog-eaters'; Germans were called Krauts, from the smelly fermented cabbage called sauerkraut they loved to eat.

The smell of Bangkok's durian, ironically dubbed the "king of fruits", has been compared to rotten onions, sewage and turpentine, even if its taste is creamy, sweet and custard-like. Smell comes before taste, and you can be taken off a plane if you try to smuggle a durian in.

Taking the cake, so to speak, for being one of the world's foulest foods is Sweden's fermented Baltic herring, known as Surströmming. The cans in which it is sold often bulge because of the gases formed during fermentation. Pop the can open, and you will be hit by the pong of rotten eggs, vinegar and ammonia. The Swedes pay money to eat it.

If your preferences run to decaying garbage, sewage and stinky socks, you could try China and Taiwan's stinky tofu, crisp outside and slushy inside. On the other hand, if you get your jollies from urinary notes, Iceland's Hákari is precisely what you need, made from Greenland shark fermented by being buried for months.

I hope Kamala Harris wins. I hope one of the first things she does is issue an executive order renaming the White House as Kamala's Chatpata Curry House, and serves masala dosas with sambar every Sunday.

You can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopi@gmail.com
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