You have been Warned

The recent initiative by the noted humanitarian organisation Heinz Foods must be the most publicised since the Berlin Airlift. And the great...

The recent initiative by the noted humanitarian organisation Heinz Foods must be the most publicised since the Berlin Airlift. And the greatest example ever of killing with kindness. Those 2,000 cans of baked beans and spaghetti will certainly be a taste of home for the Australian team, but can each of its members eat 100 canfuls without suffering gustatory cortex failure?

Besides, the shipment will be the mother of external affairs nightmares. First, as our diligent diplomats have noted, it will have to pass stringent Indian health standards. Let us harbour no doubts about the political nature of this observation. It is clearly a retaliatory measure for a recent European Union ban on Indian fish. If one section of the West can disparage our mackerel, another never mind if it8217;s east of India must be made to pay for it.

Those Heinz cans are going to be X-rayed and drop-tested. Their contents will be subjected to irradiation, solarisation and flash ionisation, followed by double titration. They will beexposed to searing heat, corrosive chemicals and Karan Thapar. A committee headed by a sitting judge of the Supreme Court will coordinate the project. Its report shall be tabled in Parliament within the tenure of the next Lok Sabha, following which the beans may yes, may be allowed in.

In the meantime, the fact that Shane Warne intends to eat the spaghetti on toast shall be leaked to the Italians. They already have a vicious vigilante group called the Pizza Police that swoops down on eateries transgressing time-honoured norms on pizza radius and topping. Now, they shall begin to consider the equally important issue of spaghetti perverted to unnatural ends. Warne will neither get home food on this tour nor, with the Spaghetti Sappers on the prowl, will he consider leaving home shores ever again. Such is the vengeance of India upon all those who look askance at her food.

Shane Warne shall remain in reduced circumstances throughout this tour. He shall have to learn to live off his own resources. He shallhave nightmares about toasted cheese and therefore feel slightly ill. And he shall dream of great banquets where the main course is Marmite soup.

Why did he have to raise the most sensitive of cultural issues, food? Born in a former colony, he should have known better. In the days when the sun never set on the Empire, making life a never-ending nightmare across the globe, the British used food habits to set themselves apart. In Australia, they crammed huge cuts of pork, stepped out on the Nullarbor Plain and dropped like flies. In India, they ate nine-course English breakfasts. The results are visible in any British Indian cemetery. Leading cause of death: apoplexy. Apoplexy while on full dress parade, while selling trading rights, while bartering and, naturally, while dining.

Intelligent Britishers8217; who adapted to local conditions and ate frugally were declared to have gone bloody native8217;. They were assumed to have started pigging out on opium, visiting scarlet women in unhygienic gullies and drinkingtoasts to the King left-handed. In reality, only Job Charnock fell from grace. He swilled arrack in alarming quantities and married locally. But nevertheless, less offensive cultural experimenters were blackballed from their clubs, transferred upcountry8217;, refused dances and, occasionally, impeached in London. In the Empire, food was political.

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Shane Warne should have considered this history of conflict before he outed his food preferences. He should have foreseen that it would become an international issue involving diplomats, corporates and the humanitarian community. Now, the Indian response should be adequate. Warne should be kept apart from his beans, for beans are politically potent. In a forgotten classic called Blazing Saddles, Mel Brooks demonstrated that they were instrumental in winning the West. How? The film8217;s name is self-explanatory.

Pratik Kanjilal