Deep Adhya, PhD

When we were in high school, I was the shy guy in the group. It was a boys’ only school. Some of my friends had girlfriends. Others didn’t. I didn’t. I always felt like I was missing out on something. But I didn’t really want girlfriends. I just wanted to have some friends and some good experiences that I could share with my friends. All I ever did was study. I was made to study. It made me depressed. I was the only child. There were only my very neurotic parents who never had any patience for anything that didn’t appeal to them. They were begrudgingly married to each other by their ambitious parents and they had decided they were going to take out their grudges on everyone in the vicinity. They didn’t like each other. Not one bit. All their emotions were buried six feet under the ground. I don’t know what happened in their lives that killed their emotions. They didn’t like emotions. They didn’t like anyone who showed emotions. That included me. So they tried their best to keep me fr...

Like the horns of a bovine creature rose the wing tips of the Boeing 787 Dreamliner, and I sat inside the ruminant securely fastened to my seat. It was an elegant sight outside the window, but not so much inside. No offence, but my journey from London to New Delhi on Air India had a mood of riding a tractor ploughing through a dusty farm during the harvesting season. I can’t quite explain the whirlpool of emotions I felt during those eight hours, but I did feel like they were being tumbled in a washing machine. As I sat exasperated, I observed that the atmosphere of the plane was alien to my fellow travellers who were being served with gourmet food, wine and reclining seats, while all they wanted was a heap of rice and a flat surface to sit on and spread their limbs. Everywhere I looked, I found proud Indian sons of the soil. They were the grass-root simpletons who looked like they loved the smell of the earth more than the recycled air of the plane. They were the v...

The red colour gravy glistening with the oil and fat of red meat immediately sets the salivary glands racing. The phenomenon is called mutton kosha. But Calcutta is not just about paratha and mutton kosha. It is also about three hundred years of British colonial rule, and the British have succeeded in every way to instill their culinary culture into the Bengali DNA. Mocambo is a very famous restaurant of Calcutta (as I would like to call it, in describing what I am going to, to set the mood and keep it that way without Indianizing it). In the olden days, it used to be one of the very few restaurants in the city to serve up an elaborate menu of Continental and British delicacies. The advent of the five-star hotels and a world class exposure has shifted the focus to expensive food made of ‘exquisite’ ingredients. But I think that it is a gimmick meant to draw crowds towards food that, other than immaculate Western presentation, hasn’t much to boast of in terms of taste. Mocambo i...