The fasting and the furious

So we’ve just ended with the most dreaded month, one with weeks of abstinence from non-vegetarian food, alcohol and a host of ingredients (cereals, tubers, etc). You know what I’m on about. Someone on my timeline inquired about ‘sushi made from vrath waale chaawal’ (rice meant for fasting, whatever that is). Domino’s lost the few orders it gets by opting to serve only vegetarian, making their pizzas unprecedentedly and impossibly worse. But not just them, many a successful joint got their Navratri on with creative options to help one labour through these “hard times”.

I honestly don’t get it; it’s supposed to be a period of fasting, implying holding back. This cutting down has scientific reasoning too: allowing the body to go through a curative self-regenerative cycle helps cleanse and strengthen organs and constitution. It’s not just about dead ancestors and dandiya by moonlight. Even the month of Ramzan has significant positive contributions to make when followed arduously.

My Muslim friends who observe Ramzan do it properly. Sure, they feast at sundown, but through the day I don’t hear them attempting to get around the system, like trying to eat molecular foam as it’s technically air and hence not food, or something similarly stupid. But all those on the Navratri train seem to be mentally derailed. Is it really that tough to stay away from Sushi for nine days? How is it alright to gorge on ghee-fried stuff simply because it isn’t made from cereal? Will one explode if they don’t get their pan-Asian fix for a week? But that’s what it sounds like. Here’s the real lowdown, if you’re vegetarian, Sushi—as the Japanese intended it—was never meant for you anyway, so stop plagiarising with vulgar adaptations.

It’s okay really to not preach the pathetic psalm of equality for all diets: some things can’t be equated. And they needn’t be; a vegetarian teetotaller will never get the sensory essence of an Osso Bucco, but since they’ll never know it, why bother recreating it for them? They can’t miss what they didn’t have or want in first place. I am non-vegetarian, but I can’t stand eels, so I stay away from them. I don’t secretly crave a chef to fashion them out of tenderloin and give it the same textural characteristics.

But before you hurl the bricks, vegetarian can be exciting too—just ask Ankit Gupta of Burma Burma, who does the best Burmese I’ve had yet. It’s also vegan and yet it didn’t feel lacking. So there’s still hope: to be mutable yet authentic. But I draw the line at ‘sushi made from vrath waale chaawal’.

So next time there’s fasting on the charts, do it right; don’t go hunting online for which maverick restaurant has found a way to disguise a classic and make it vrath-compliant. I bet there’s a statistic out there which shows that all of you who fast for these nine days actually consume more calories than otherwise.

While on fasting, and without (directly) commenting on it, the whole Karva Chauth and women’s equality debate has been excellent food for thought across media recently. And if my liberal (also libertine) views are an inkling to go by, you know exactly which way I lean on that. 

The writer is a sommelier

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