My latest visit to the mahabalipuram market has bought in
too many thoughts in my head I need to get them out. So...what is a better way
than to put it on internet and share it with the whole world…except North Korea
though? People are not allowed to access internet in that country. Bad
for them but there is nothing we can do about it. All we can do is to wait for
the USA to get annoyed by their weird secrecy or intimidate buy their growing
military power and attack them. May be than those people get some relief…
But again, getting attacked by USA is not that comforting too. We all have seen
Wikileaks cables on Afghanistan.
Anyways let me start with my post…I am big foodie and
walking through any market place I first tend to check out the eating joints
all around. From masala dosa to lasagne, I love it all. So much so that of my
fascination with food that.....I have even started working on a web site named “delhi-cious”
which would provides information about cuisine, restaurants and food outlets in
Delhi/NCR. I also worked on the logo and wanted to get some t-shirts made.
Anyway I believe food industry in India is going
through a lot of changes with many foreign players coming into the market
providing easy access to pizzas and pastas, which used to be an exotic food of
the west few years back…..In Delhi, sitting in McDonalds under my
office, which now serves a breakfast menu for caffeine junkie
generation, I see people, all of them with dangling ID badges around their
neck, getting in or out of fancy fast food restaurants with big coffee mug in
one hand and burger in another. New western food outlets are sprouting up like
weed every day,… providing to the needs of a big section of our society. They
have an open kitchen where you can be sure of quality and serve to your needs
in minutes. No matter its Chennai or Delhi taste, quality, service and ambiance
of the restaurant remain same, which gives you the same pleasant experience to
your meal, and no time is wasted in getting adapted to the new environment in
this fast paced world.
I am definitely in consent that........with globalization,
food outlets in India have also been globalized and are on the rise, but there
is another side to this which might not be as beautiful and bright. Coming back
to my visit to the mahabalipuram market, I saw the whole new picture
there. The real street food of India is losing its aroma. The local Indian food
restaurants are clearly losing out to the western market and people are
preferring cappuccino over filter coffee. This is definitely not about the taste and can
only be about the presentation to the customer.......After finishing off my lunch in
express avenue mall in Chennai, me and my friends decided to spend the evening
in mahabalipuram local market and have dinner there itself. This little
experience of mine to two different kinds of food outlets can only be explained
through an analogy.
When I was a kid, I was fascinated by the Batman series and
its villains scare the hell out of me. A little kid horrified with his
parents’ death, inherits his father’s huge empire and decides to fight crime on
his own without following any law. I was most captivated by the enemies of the
Batman,…like scarecrow who uses some toxin on his victims to exaggerate their
paranoia and bring their phobias to life and the joker, a psychopathic clown.
But out of these outlandish super-villains, the one who intrigues me the
most is the ‘Two-Face’-once a clean cut attorney, now a person with dual
personality.
During my visit to the
local market in search of real street food after the big food court in Chennai
mall, strangely.....this image of ‘Two-face’ popped up in my head.....There is no doubt that with so much of foreign money pouring
into India, food restaurants have ushered themselves to the array of fancy
outlets inside the mall having cuisines from all around the world. But the other
half of these food joints have been left on the streets which have been
abandoned by the major section of the society and it is now also losing its
good old charm.
In my next post I will talk on where these Indian food
outlets are losing and how can they be resuscitated? (Source of 3rd Image http://www.holytrousers.com/)
Ashish Jindal
FT13414
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