Snakes and Tea

When navel-gazing is a national asana, can nostalgia be far behind? And so it is that hunger for all things local—regional subregional, sub-sub-regional—has stirred fresh batches of online retailers into selling a host of previously hard-to-find delicacies. On offer is everything from Naga pickled pork intestines to Uttarakhand’s bal mithai, that dreadful, carbuncled confection no one remembers ever actually eating. Counting on homesickness for some—and an unhealthy amount of misplaced curiosity for others—etailers are hoping to help themselves eventually to an estimated Rs 50,000-crore ‘ethnic food’ pie.