God’s Own Country Cooking
When mixed together, the outdoors, Kerala and food make for the perfect YouTube recipe
In
a video titled ‘Simple Kerala Style Chicken Fry’, uploaded on YouTube channel ‘Village Cooking – Kerala’, the sound of heavy rain mingles with the sizzle of chicken cooking in a heady spice mix of coriander, red chilli and pepper. In the videos, shot in Pothupara in Kerala’s Pathanamthitta district, birds chirp away as 66-year-old Omana amma expertly crushes whole spices on an ammikallu and cooks on a wood-fired stove.
In Palakkad, brothers Sebin and Ebin P.K. shoot videos atop a hill overlooking the Mangalam dam, for their channel ‘Hilltop Kitchen by PK brothers’. The videos begin with a panoramic shot of the dam, before Sebin collects twigs to get his stove burning, or plucks pineapples to rustle up some halwa.
These channels showcasing rural life in lush Kerala evoke nostalgia and are a clear hit with viewers. “Our viewers are mainly Malayalis based abroad who enjoy seeing the beautiful ambience, especially at the end of a long work day,” says Sebin.
Amjith S. of ‘Village Cooking – Kerala’ says Tamil channels (like Village Cooking Channel, which had Rahul Gandhi on as a surprise guest), helped make the idea of cooking outdoors popular. “We worked on that format to showcase traditional recipes and style of cooking in Kerala.” A video on a pothichoru—matta rice, beetroot thoran, potato mezhukkupuratti, coconut chutney, fish fry and an omelette all tightly wrapped in banana and areca nut tree leaves—has attracted over 1.2 million views. “Omana amma is a neighbour and relative. We grew up eating her delicious food,” says Amjith. His brother and the channel’s co-creator Abhijith suggested they shoot videos featuring her. “It took six months to convince her,” he says.
The P.K. brothers live on the hill where they shoot. This poses unique challenges—to get ingredients, they either have to walk or get a small vehicle like an off-road jeep, while dealing with unpredictable weather. They don’t necessarily stick to recipes from Kerala. “Our most popular video is on ginger beer which we, coincidentally, uploaded on the day the lockdown was imposed in Kerala,” says Sebin, who has worked in a hotel.
Village Food Channel, started by Firoz Chuttipara, 35, three years ago, has 4.27 million subscribers. “I think my Palakkad dialect and style of cooking made it popular,” says Chuttipara, who shoots in the village Chuttipara in Palakkad. He is a welder by profession and the skill comes in handy—in one video, he constructed a shawarma station from scratch to cook meat. His most popular videos show him cook kumbalanga chicken, kuzhi mandi and pigeon curry. Since Chuttipara cooks in bulk, the food ends up being distributed among villagers and in orphanages. ■
It’s hard to say whether the characters in Anuja Chauhan’s five previous novels were as loathsome as the ones in her newest, Club You to Death, or whether elite Indian society has simply become so cringeworthy that it is almost unbearable to look at its reflection in Chauhan’s first murder mystery. Certainly it is simpler to overlook the prejudices and follies of the privileged of another era, for example 1980s Delhi, in Chauhan’s The House that BJ Built.
Chauhan’s protagonists are never morally uncomplicated: her heroines are often feisty and her heroes cocky, but to even refer glancingly (as some promotional material does), to this novel as a “romance” is wide of the mark. The only sympathetic character is kindly “Papa Bear” ACP Bhavani, an unlikely upstanding Delhi cop. The suspects—members and staff of the “Delhi Turf Club” (a stand-in for the Delhi Gymkhana Club)—are a selfish, limited lot. Even young hotshot human rights lawyer Kashi Dogra, a man most conflicted about his place in this social circle, is, to some extent, trapped within it. The novel opens with his parents’ lament that Kashi isn’t taking up his coveted permanent membership at the DTC, but there’s a sense throughout the book that he might yet succumb—not only to the allure of the old club, but also his ex-girlfriend, club princess Bambi Todi. Romance in this novel looks like a horror-show parody—love reflected in a funhouse mirror. It almost seems like in this world there can be no other kind.
The novel is satirical, but humorous rather than pedantic or scathing. Chauhan’s deftly worked caricatures are almost affectionately drawn, as she lightly lays bare the contradictions and complexities of Delhi high society. The stereotypes are familiar (see Ravi Shankar Etteth’s Killing Time in Delhi for a similar cast) but distinctly memorable. At times the rendering into English of different registers of Hindi or Hinglish can be slightly jarring, though not inaccurate.
Chauhan’s wit and way with words are as solid as ever, with plenty of laughout-loud zingers. The pace and plotting are also skillfully engineered with plot twists and slow reveals. These keep the novel engaging, while it remains difficult to invest in the redemption of any of the characters or their relationships. Chauhan writes about India’s exclusive club culture from a place of love, maybe even nostalgia, yet as a new national order threatens the security of a centuries-old way of life, she makes no attempt to defend its elitist legacy either. ■