Homogenization of Indian Food

 India is full of colours, flavours, and contrasts. This is quite evident in the country’s cuisine. But for the past few years, everything has been moving towards homogeneity. Earlier, some kinds of foods were consumed only on a certain occasion. This kept the taste utility intact. Thanks to capitalism, now any food anytime and anywhere.  Then entered some new cuisines to enrich our taste buds. But slowly, even they adopted to Indian taste and became very Indianised.

While all this was reaching its saturation, a new wave of food flooded the markets. Experimental fusion of anything and everything possible. By fusion I mean, the same common ingredients being overused everywhere. Once there was butter chicken, pizza, pasta, and shawarma. But now we have butter chicken, butter chicken pizza, butter chicken pasta, and butter chicken shawarma.

Butter Chicken Pizza

This fusion wasn’t a bad idea initially. But only a few popular flavours slowly started taking over every diverse food. The most common ingredients are – schezwan, butter, cheese, and mayonnaise. These common ingredients in huge amounts invaded our dosas, pizzas, pav bhajis, pasta, vada pav, sandwiches and even shawarmas. Apart from common ingredients, the main core of the dish also changed.

Recently, I had been to a place where I ordered a fried chicken burger, and also a chicken roll. The normal expectations were fried chicken burger would have a crispy patty like a chicken nugget, and the roll would have an Indian gravy. But turns out, that both had the same ingredient, differentiated only by the bread used to cover it.

Earlier, these abominations were one of many diverse options on the menu list. But then it became the default option. This is where the diversity began to fall apart. So, now you have a pizza that tastes like butter chicken, a roll that tastes like a chicken nugget, and now a shawarma that tastes like schezwan.

Shawarma

Yes! Shawarma, whose USP was that it tasted warm because of its Tahini, Garlic or Sriracha sauce, occasionally with Hummus (which most Indians won’t find appealing). This warm, juicy, and occasionally creamy roll of chicken and pita bread was never associated with acidity infusing spiciness, until now. But now at many outlets, spicy schezwan has become a default sauce. The vendor’s logic, it is cheap and easily available and everyone likes it. Lots of mayonnaise is required to reduce this radioactive schezwan’s spiciness, but you still feel it in your stomach.

Then comes the cheese - grated all over the food like snow in Siberia. Whether it is pav bhaji, chaat, dosa or vada pav, cheese in these foods feels like global warming. Like snowing in tropical regions.

We live in an age where almost every food is added with cheese, schezwan sauce, noodles, Piri Piri, or Maggie masala, and other generic spices making the variety of food taste homogenous. This taste oligarchy is dangerous for the taste buds of people. People’s tastebuds are going numb and they are no longer able to enjoy subtle taste like the rest of the world does. In a way, we are destroying the diversity of our flavours and making everything taste the same.