Where is our guide book to the real?
In a quaint restaurant, Tuscany Gardens (Goa) I was served in front of me a big truth. Something which I believed to be true now cracked to reveal another. The mind of truths which always keep you on the edge because it reminds you that nothing you know is true. And just like in that restaurant I came to realize what pizza actually tasted like.
I am from a modest city and many in India won't know, which is Bhubaneswar. But we have our truths. Like how even Dominoes and Pizza Hut are the occasional luxuries available to us. And we are happy with it. So now while in Goa for the first time and a restaurant straight out of a travel magazine, I was already breaking out of a lot of moulds. But the most striking was biting into this fancy crispy paratha with ‘real’ cheese. Pizza was one of my comfort foods. On days I felt like didn’t exist I would go to fast food joints and feel a little cosmopolitan. But now I think how d(b)readful my past experience has been. But at that moment I was excited, like overhearing a candy crinkled open in the middle of a class. So, I looked at the menu and ordered a few more to find out more. And while I am gulping down on 4 pizzas, my boyfriend sitting next to me lets out a sigh, “This isn’t how Italians do their pizza”.
WAIT. Hold the fuck up. Let’s pause for the cheese to slide down my throat or maybe let me take a sip of water first. Like, let the cheese digest a bit. But now it is ruined. Apparently, this isn’t real either. And then I find myself sitting with a sour face and thinking where to go from here.
I am not a purist. I am not always obsessed with the genuine, just like I have t-shirts from Zara or enjoying the occasional Bollywood sasta remix (‘Aa Ante Amlapuram’ to be specific). But sometimes, I would l-oo-ve to bite into indigenous, authentic, unadulterated and REAL pizza.
My next step (like it always is at any inconvenience), I did a couple of google searches and asked my boyfriend who ruined it for me in the first place. I gathered some facts.
A good authentic Neapolitan pizza isn’t much more than a paratha like base with cheese, tomato and basil. And now where do I find it? Some exotic restaurant in a touristy place with dim lights and overpriced wine. Which I get, there are lot of equations with luxury which do justify it. I mean, didn’t I spend more money (context to me) in fast food chains because they were my luxury in Bhubaneswar. I mean small luxury, but luxury none the less. I enjoyed the queues, the swipe of the credit card and ordering in accented English. But logistically, they are cheaper, and to do that they put the additives, preservatives and artificial ingredients and made it a factory. Why they just don’t make it like it is supposed to, is a mystery. Because simple cheese, paratha, basil wouldn’t cost that much for sure. This mystery they call glocalization. Sort of modifying product to suit the demographic. I just wonder how they concluded Indians prefer brick-thick crust and fake cheese. But my concern isn’t about reinterpreting or modifying things. There can be Indian pizzas and French chakulis. Because just how matter cannot be created, ideas don’t magically appear. They simply arrive from other ideas. And frankly I am pretty sure now we have grown to like so many things which aren’t authentic. But what I am concerned and hence whining since so long are two things –
Dough can be stretched and pulled but at a point they become over-kneaded. So, when do ideas over-knead? When do we stop the train of reinterpretation? Is it when they stop being relevant to the creator or the customer? At what point does it become appropriation?
Commercial goods are watered down to be cheap and attainable, understood. But why are we led to believe that pure and the ‘real’ should cost more, hence afforded by fewer people? And even if it does cost more to be made, why do labels like authenticity or purity have a price of its own? Isn’t it against the whole ‘sustainability mission’ because if you are charging more for it, you don’t want it to be popular.
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