The problem with Chicken Tikka Masala and Bollywood

The problem with Chicken Tikka Masala and Bollywood is they are doing a fine job of misrepresenting what Indians eat and how Indians live and love.

Silicon Valley,California has more Indian eateries per square mile than Calcutta,India. All of these serve up a standard fare of curries that are uniformly red, hot and spicy. Many of the customers at these places are of Indian origin, and many others who are not - are continuing their exploration of culinary delights of the subcontinent. The Tikka Masala, has come to represent Indian cuisine to a sizeable chunk of these customers. Bring up the subject of Indian food, they are quick to express their love for Tikka Masala and Tandoori. No wonder that Tandoori was tomtomed to be the national entree of the English people in a recent survey on the island.

Now i come from a part of the India where nobody was eating Chicken Tikka Masala until twenty years ago. Twenty years later, the only people partaking of its delights are still marginal in comparison to the folks that are not. My grandpa, and this is true, never picked up a CTM on his way back from work at his day job in the East India company.

Bengalis do not eat CTM at home. They do not sing and dance around trees either, as Bollywood would lead you to believe. Neither do Tamilians and Gujaratis and Telegus. I can vouch for that.

Curry was and is an integral part of the cuisine, but a mild and flat fish curry that was never as colourful. We would listen to music, but of the genre whose inflections did not require gyrations of the pelvis. I wrote my first love letter in english, and was reprimanded by the elders for the mere expression of love in the handwritten letter. I shudder to think what would have happened had i decided to employ my oustanding skills on tree-dancing. As a point of clarification - this particular dance form has no relation to pole dancing, tree dancing was entirely invented in Bollywood and involves lovelorn characters running around huge barks. Never in my travels through the country, have i seen young boys and girls dancing in,on or under trains, roads and waterfalls. While in almost every Bollywood movie with a Boy-meets-Girl storyline, this is a recurring visual - with the female curves accentuated by glamorous and ornate dresses.

The true window into a society is through its popular culture and cuisine. There truly isn't any one thing called the Indian cuisine (see map above). Note that the map shows state of Kashmir in its entirety, for i am patriotic beef eating Indian.

Maybe art is not supposed to reflect the realities of life, and since film is an art form, Bollywood is free to choose what it wants to depict. Its just that it creates the perception disconnect, popular culture and mood may not be the best face of a nation. The masses had also wanted a certain Adolf many years ago.

Meanwhile, i will continue to defend the position that the land of CTM and Bollywood is not the land you have come to love or hate as India. Er, what land .....?

Related Link
http://www.cafedhaka.com/