Fodder politic

That all eyes would be trained on the forecourt of the Rashtrapati Bhavan last week was a given. That all eyes would rest on its overladen tables was not. Fiercely guarded — almost as fiercely as the list of cabinet ministers — the menu for the swearing-in ceremony (once revealed) was picked at for crucial culinary cues. Was it the benign platter of diversity it ought to have been? Or had the Gujaratis finally given the finger to those that dared call their kadhi sweet? Was the omission of biryani a brazen bazooka to bilateral ties? Or had a certain Ms Omita Paul pulled a shorshe-chingri coup to say, ‘Boss, the boss is in the house’?

Whatever the takeaways may’ve been, it was clear that like the good old Amby, soggy samosas and onion pakoras were retiring at last from public life. Khaman dhokla was king now (although, if Sanjaya Baru is to be believed, it had long infiltrated the PMO’s stolid, diabetic ranks).

History, however, has been unkind to most prime ministers and heads of states. In a capital city where it’s hard to turn a corner without eating (or smelling) butter chicken and kebabs, the latter’s weak digestive systems have rarely allowed for celebratory concessions. Of the last few residents of Raisina Hill, most were unadventurous and vegetarian. KR Narayanan’s cocktail idlis and vadas, for instance, seemed infinitely more glamorous when compared with Kalam’s curd rice and lunch of fruits. Mrs Patil may have added some spice at long last, bringing in mirchi vadas from a shop outside the Bhavan. But she rarely breached the achari fish tikka’s Scoville ratings after the Obamas came and went to town.

And even if one were to discount the severity of mashed raw veggies and urine for the last Gujarati PM, many before and after him have stuck to what the doctor ordered (austerity was once a virtue in politics). From Lal Bahadur Shastri’s one frugal meal a day (he cooked it himself on trips abroad) to the diet of Dianol tablets that kept Narasimha Rao’s sugar levels in check, food was business, never pleasure. The only exceptions: the Gandhis (known to have meaty, Kashmiri proclivities and a love for salmon sandwiches) and AB Vajpayee, a man with a taste for Scotch, Lucknowi kebabs and Chinese.

Chef Marut Sikka, who was invited to cater at the Agra Summit in 2001 for Vajpayee and Pervez Musharraf, recalls, for instance, that “the only sheet of paper signed that summer was the menu card; a copy of which is still with me”.

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