Talking Shop: Missing ingredients

“Instead of going outside for

dinner, get good ingredients.

Cooking shows affection. In a

bad economy, it’s important

to make yourself feel good.”

—Ina Garten

Pilot, White House economist and Barefoot Contessa cook-show host Ina Garten knows more than many give her credit for—be it how to push or pull back the aircraft rudder, drive forward the world’s largest economy or just prance her ladle around in a pot to stir up intense and oft-whacky culinary concoctions. She is known for being outspoken, yet thrifty with words, earning her untold sobriquets and monikers, none more endearing than that of being “as much at home in the kitchen as in the cockpit and in boardrooms”. Therefore, when Garten tells us to try and feel good in a bad economy, you had better try and feel good in a bad economy. Don’t diverge from good advice coming from a smart person.

Intrinsically, though, we have a problem in following her advice. While we have great cooks in our land, most of them are in a fix as utensils and key condiments are missing from the kitchen, making it well-nigh impossible to stir up an invigorating, life-saving broth. It is due to this that in humble Indian kitchens or societal cook-fests, we find ourselves scrambling to put together a recipe to satisfy palate and mind. Be it households, politics or business fortunes, things are topsy-turvy in the fare being dished out. As I end the paragraph, let’s damn the argots, idioms and patois—it is time to get down to brass-tacks and tackle things head-on and dead-centre if we want to become a US $5-trillion economy.

What stirred this thought?

The trigger for today’s verbal volley is as blasé as it is personal. I was in my kitchen the other day. Trying to put together a sumptuous Denver Omelette, I opened a pack of cheese slices and was flabbergasted: “Who took my (damn) cheese?” I wasn’t quoting from Dr Spencer Johnson’s book or being a dilettante; I was just peeved at my missing cheese, with the packet containing only 5 slices, as against the normal 10. I sniffed the air and looked around to locate rats, if any, man-type or the four-legged rodent-kind. There were none. The mystery was only solved when I looked at the packing closely, which read ‘5 SLICES’ in bold. What happened to the other five, I was left wondering. Well, the slowdown and stringent cost-cutting at India’s FMCG firms did, I found out soon enough.

Some research led me deeper into the supply malaise that surrounds us. As I wrote recently, a double-whammy confronts Indian businesses, with sales slithering and profits dwindling. With no recourse or let-up in sight, even leading companies are turning to innovations, freebies and offers to tide over the brutal sales storm. Facing a near-all-time-low in the offtake of products, there is little option but to improvise. Freebies and discounts rule the roost in every segment. You get more weight at the old price, or a plus-one offer to coax you. In some cases, the price is slashed, but so are the contents. ‘More for less’ or ‘less for less’ is the new economics diktat. That, incidentally, is what happened to my cheese.

More to it than cheese

It is not just in my cheese where the contents are less than promised or the price more than we planned or bargained for. It is happening in other life-walks as well, like politics and economics (as iterated above). Today’s stalwarts on these two critical fronts are anything but, and their vocabulary and substance is lacking in the most basic of ingredients and condiments. As we are talking kitchens, we should accept that, much like florid veins, we have resigned ourselves to empty shells creating superficial cacophony and all-round clutter, not deep-seated financial and industrial growth, or societal togetherness. Thus, we have economic numbers that defy even the essential demands of any financial juggernaut, overshadowed by raucous verbal vomiting that nixes true camaraderie.

That brings us to a burning question—why are we settling for some rasping paper tigers when we have many who have ushered in change and advancement with little noise? As a nation and a Planet, we have followed those who embrace opportunity and selflessly pave the path for future generations. As a race, homo sapiens are said to have been born only to assimilate, learn, procreate and pass on the learning. In the process is created a smarter next generation; a process that has seen us evolve from roaming the Earth on bare soles to riding in bullet trains and flying in supersonic aircraft, even traipsing the unknowns in outer space and beyond. Let us not subjugate ourselves to the tangential analogy of moving from bow and arrow to RPGs, laser-guided missiles and sharper-than-knives verbiage and vitriol. That would be historically criminal.

Choice: Moore or Murphy?

We live in a world steeped in technology and the overwhelming advancement of its composites. Going by Moore’s Law, technology (read ‘transistors on a circuit’) will double every two years at minimal cost. A corollary is Murphy’s Law, which says that “anything that can go wrong will go wrong”. It is a choice we have to make, an option for us to choose from. Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral. In the last 50 years, the Internet has been transformative and disruptive. Going forward, communication and AI show every sign of being even more game-changing and ruthless. Back to the choice we need to make—we can embed democratic values and human rights into the design and implementation of tomorrow’s systems, or we can scoff at them and live at our peril. We can create inclusive societies, where networked communities define the future, or we can create tools for mass surveillance and population control, breeding inequalities between people themselves, both locally and across the world.

Japanese ‘Iron Chef’ Masaharu Morimoto said: “No rules. Don’t be afraid to do whatever you want. Cooking doesn’t have to have rules. I don’t like it that way.” For some reason, more of the world than not seems enamoured of Morimoto-san’s thoughts and has embraced them quite wholeheartedly (there’s nothing called ‘whole-stomachedly’, is there?). And that is perhaps why the world and its people are learning to live without rules, doing whatever they want to within and outside the proverbial kitchen. Life doesn’t always give you what you want when you want it; things change unexpectedly. We can find ways to adapt and overcome our fears, and good things may just come around. You have a choice—I leave it to you to take your best pick.

The writer is a veteran

journalist and communications

specialist. He can be reached on

narayanrajeev2006@gmail.com.

Views expressed are personal