Purists can drop dead now. The Chicken Tikka pizza, Paneer Zinger and McAloo Burger have found a new, half-breed friend in the Birizza. The Pizza Hut offering, which has travelled to Indian shores via Sri Lanka, is the bastard child of biryani and pizza, where the rice—cooked with vegetables, paneer or chicken—is submerged under a layer of pizza crust and served with ‘masala gravy’.
The tweaking of menus to pander to the local palate is something that all multinational fast food brands do across the world. Consider McDonalds Beef Rice Bowl in China or the McArabia in West Asia, where the shawarma has morphed into a hamburger wannabe with two meat patties wrapped in pita bread, topped with lettuce, tomato, onion and tahini sauce.
I get that economics says adapt or die, and that the axiom of applied anthropology must steer the spread of businesses and brands—be it by creating Nehru jackets for Cavalli buyers in India or tutoring aggressive American employees in the delicate art of business card exchanges in Japan. When a foreign player enters a new market, it has to devise a culturally-appropriate way to fit in.
But maybe it’s time to call a time-out. A young colleague tells me she went to a Dominos outlet in Delhi with a friend last week. Not in the mood for meat, she ordered a vegetarian pizza. “When it came, we couldn’t decide whether it tasted of sambar or aam ka achar. The menu had it down as a ‘Mexican Green Wave’; the taste pegged it at an inedible ‘trans-Indian wave’,” she says.
Global dexterity requires companies/brands to adapt their behaviour across cultures to be appropriate in every new setting. But how much should they give in to fit in? Doesn’t a totally bastardised menu defeat the very purpose of a food brand going into a new market? Doesn’t it want to give its new constituency of consumers a taste of what make it special back home? Is a lapsed identity an acceptable price to pay for commercial success? (And I’m not sure a ‘biryani pizza’ guarantees that anyway.)
It’s not just brands that seem to forget their roots as they branch farther out into the world. As citizens of an ever-flattening world, individuals too are turning into very different animals as they try and fit into a new job or social circle. I appreciate that a global economy requires us to be capable of moving smoothly and seamlessly across cultures. I totally believe that one must learn how to bow or shake hands or talk to elders/superiors in the manner of the country and/or company in which one operates. That is only courteous.
But do we have to stamp out our individuality and obliterate our personality to become a company man? As it is, growing up requires us to give up parts of ourselves to fit into our immediate world. They call it “socialization”. That done, should we further edit away pieces of ourselves to cater to a particular relationship, or job, or circle of friends? I think not.
After all, he who blindly follows a crowd tends to get lost in it. And, as the wag said, “Be yourself and say what you feel, because those who mind don’t matter, and those who matter don’t mind.” I’ll start by saying I hate the Birizza.
shampa@newindianexpress.com