When growing up in Gujarat, i was enlightened by the fact that "BAINGAN" has a folk tale for itself, due to which it is the least preferred vegetable. It goes this way........
There was a king who was bored with normal cuisine that he had, asked for something new, hence a special cook was appointed for a day or two for the king
On the first day, the cook surveyed the whole kitchen n found all vegetables other than brinjal, so he decided to ask for it. As that vegetable was not consumed by the king, the market of the kingdom did not sell it too & neither any farmers produced the same. So he ordered some from his home town. Eventually after all the hoo haa, the cook was able to make a good curry out of it.
Now the fun starts, when he served the curry to the king, he told,"For u my king, i present the king of vegetables, Baingan raja" (sounds better in gujarati!!! :p). The king saw the curry with a skeptical look, but anyways tried it. As the taste buds felt the taste of the spicy baingan curry for the first time, he was over whelmed; he was sooo happy that he removed his jewels & gave it as a present to the cook. His courtesans, being the most well breed chaplus, praised the baingan too. They wrote sher, poetry, admired the colour, etc. etc.
News spread like wild fire, Baingan became the royal vegetable that was only grown in palaces or selected farms. Slowly the black market for it started, it was sold at a premium, accepted as bribes so on & so forth.
Now to please the king all the members of court, the villagers & farmers everybody gave something related to Baingan to the king. For some 3 months on everyday basis the king used to in some or the other manner had to encounter the vegetable king. Eventually he got booooooored of it.
Once day when he was served baingan dish as everyday, he looked & said, "i hate this vegetable & never for me shall anyone prepare this dish!!!" Thats it, that was the day, when brinjal lost its royalty. Its told that all of a sudden the courtesans started telling how disgraceful it looks, tastes, there was a comment which said the reason its called Baingan its because its 'bina gunn' (no good quality). The news again spread in the country, with the same fate for the vegetable king.
Hence since then, this poor vegetable is the least preferred, least liked or is hardly used during any celebration, festival or normal cuisine. For a matter of fact, every vegetable that we eat has some or the other state producing it in abundance, whereas for Baingan, which is an India n vege, there are no takers............:P
Anyways, there was this funny article appeared in TOI some days back.
I simply loved the way the writer of this article drew a parallel between Baingan & an unnoticed Indian. enjoy
They have got it all wrong. I mean those who tried to sow seeds of discontent between me and my putative Bt, sorry, bete noire. They don’t know how grateful i am to it. But for it, i would still be a nobody, an extra, so to say, in the galaxy of greens. If today i compete with the likes of Shah Rukh Khan and Sachin Tendulkar for countrywide popularity, it is entirely owing to my genetically altered ego.
Just look at it. Despite my stellar qualities, i was just the ‘Ghar ki murgi daal barabar’. They did not take a cue from the hit Bollywood number, ‘Dekhi lakh lakh pardesi girl/ Sab toh soni saadi desi girl/ Who’s the hottest girl in the world?/ My desi girl/ My desi girl.’ They recognised my worth only after the foreigners did so.
For a quintessential Indian could anything be more painful? I can’t understand why i was treated with such indifference by my own countrymen. I am on their plates whether you go east or west, north or south of India. But when it came to getting credit there was always the aaloo or the foul-smelling pyaaj ahead of me.
Imagine how sidelined i felt when an out and out desi politician tried to make aaloo– a fellow with decided foreign origins – immortal by saying, “Jab tak rahega samose mein aaloo/ tab tak rahega Bihar mein Lalu.” Talking of samosas it beats me why they never stuff me into them or into curvy parathas but instead pack me into pathetically shaped pakoras.
You have desi phrases honouring even as knotty a thing as ginger. Thus you say, ‘Bandar kya jaane adrak ka swad?’ But if i had ever asked a man of letters to coin a complimentary phrase around me, i am sure he would have said, “Tum kis khet ki mooli ho?” All they can do to me is to poke fun through cliched Akbar-Birbal tales.
When the westerners realised that their children disliked spinach, they gave it an iconic status by making it the power-munch of Popeye. But not one Indian cartoonist thought of making me the chosen chomp of an Indian superman so that children here could take to me without throwing tantrums.
Even my great looks were overlooked. Nature has endowed me with the softest of skins, the brightest of colours and curviest of contours. And yet no Indian painter has done my portrait, not even M F Husain when i would have gladly allowed myself to be painted in the nude. I cared little when the westerners launched computers called apple and cellphones called blackberry. But when an Indian manufacturer chooses lemon over me as the brand name for its cellphone, it hurts.
However hard the times for housewives, i have never acted pricey. Among all vegetables, i alone seem to defy the laws of demand and supply. I remain the shining symbol of the quintessential Indian trait called resilience. But rather than appreciating it they call anyone who is wary of taking a firm stand a ‘Thali ka baingan’.
Forget about making me an election issue as they made that arrogant tuber – the onion – in the not too recent past, i wasn’t even picked up as the symbol of any political party, national or regional. You have an entire bazaar of Mumbai named after that slimy thing – the bhindi– but not even an alley of Bareilly is named after me.
Perhaps i should not think like this. So what if i arrived late? Haven’t i arrived with my desiness intact? But now that i have become a celebrity, i can’t wait for campaign managers to sign me up for promoting the products of their clients. And the first thing i am going to endorse would be potato chips. Imagine that imported abomination – the aaloo – needing my endorsement. It would be an event no less momentous than an Indian buying the East India Company.
