Muttons and Cakes

People make them wrong.

I hope I am not a snob when it comes to many things. Like luxury brands. Or cultural elements. Or occupations. But forgive me for this slight on my character (which is maybe why I haven’t been canonized yet because otherwise I am basically a saint) but I am a snob when it comes to dessert and randomly, mutton curry.

I blame Delhi for this.

In Delhi, I ate a lot of dessert items. They were wonderful. Defence Colony, Greater Kailash and Connaught Place mostly. Now more people who have travelled wider and experienced more than me would have more to say on the culinary arts of baked goods, but for me, Delhi was it. But it was a good it. As far as I know.

I talk here about tiramisu, opera pastries, black forest cakes, cheesecakes and red velvet cakes. 

When I returned home, I found there were a few people in Mizoram who made wonderful cheesecakes that could even compete, on good days, with The Big Chill. Otherwise? People just don’t make my favourite cakes well in Mizoram. Not consistently, at least. Vanilla based cakes they manage quite well and I love some of them, definitely. But with chocolate, something is always missing. It’s too heavy, or too dry, or too sweet, or the moist-ness is wrong, or the cherry is less (with blackforest), or something. It’s always not-quite-right.

There was The Twisted Sisters in Aizawl who made amazing bombolinis. Now that could compete with Dunkin Donuts, no problem, and emerge on top. What a winner! Do they still make it? Or KT Bakery in Lunglei who make heavenly rum balls. I’d happily rake up my calorie intake for those bad boys. 

See this is the thing about calories when you get older. Your metabolism isn’t as good as when you were seventeen. So if you risk fat for something, let it be worth it. There’s no point eating sub-par food and gaining weight and all its accompanying health concerns. The moment on the lips should be worth the forever on the hips. YOLO.

With mutton, I don’t have a lot to say. Good mutton curry should be cooked well and tearing apart with the tenderest touch. It should be seasoned well and not just a masala dump. If it has potatoes in it, the aloo should never overpower it. The general colour should be more a deep red (more soy-sauce-y) than haldi-esque. It should smell clean and subtle, and not heavy and overwhelmingly spice-laden that you can’t even smell the distinct aroma of the meat.

See I’m not snobbish about most food, even fast food, not even with the rubbish chow and momo we sometimes get in Mizoram. Even when the boiled egg is sweating beads because it was just pulled out of a fridge on a hot day. Even when the samosa in the little village is so ginger-and-red-chilli hot that I start sweating. I appreciate people who make food and I usually just eat what I eat and if I don’t like it, quietly not eat. I don’t usually judge food and their makers. So I don’t know why I am this way with cakes and mutton. But it is what it is. I remain very snobbish about mutton and cakes.

And books too, maybe. If your favourite Indian author is Chetan Bhagat, I’m sorry but I judge you.

Ing-Lees

In Mizoram, as is in India, as is in most post-colonial countries, English is a measure of a certain echelon of people. Class, they say. Very often, it is a measure of success and intelligence, however misguided. And so we continue to judge people by the way they speak a foreign language.

It is what it is.

As it stands now, whether or not it is good or bad, it is the language I was educated in. And the language I read the fastest in. It is the language I use for numbers. It is the language I express myself with. It is also the language I watch TV.

I am not alone.

I do not know how good or bad I am in it. What I do know is that I am not that much better expressing myself in my own mother tongue. Not because I don’t know Mizo but more because I am not often the most loquacious.

Loquacious. What a pretty word. All Q words are pretty, I think.

As far as accents go, I think my English is accented by TV, Kerala nuns and North Indians. It depends where I've learnt of specific words and phrases and the way I've mimicked them. Sometimes I do try to enunciate but when I do, it sounds a little weird and forced. And if I repeat myself time and again, words start to sound strange. I mean... say food. Say food out loud. Say food again. Say food ten more times. Just sounds weirder and weirder. Or any word. All words sound strange if you repeat them enough times.

Even a word as pretty as picturesque. Why are all -esque words so pretty? I don't know. Maybe because they have Q in them.

When English isn't your first language, the languages you know bleed into it. English is very accommodating. So all these words start to blend into a strange and exciting new accent.

Like loquacious. I first heard of the word as spoken by Emma Watson in an interview and I loved the sound of it. In my head, loquacious is spoken in a British accent because that's where I heard it first. If I use it in a sentence, I might come across as trying to speak in a British accent. Truth is, I just learnt of it one way and that's how it's stuck in my head. Of course the rest of the sentence would be in Mizo accent so the difference might be jarring.

I think I strive for a neutral accent. Like the kind spoken by the old man who had a bookstore in Connaught Place in Delhi, whose shop we often visited as college girls because we had a crush on him and his neutral English.

And after we visited his shop, we’d go across the street and buy McVitie’s digestive biscuits. It was the only place we knew at the time that sold the snack. And my friend loved it. I forgot what I was talking about.