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Cooking up fantasies
Mannika Chopra

Many, many decades ago, when I was in school, we used to have stickers that were placed neatly on brown paper- covered notebooks, on which we would write carefully, in cursive script, our names. Each of those stickers — normally passed around as promotions by ink manufacturer Quink — would carry at the bottom a familiar saying or a proverb. For the most part, they would direct young students towards better ethical standards.

But there is one that stands out even after a long, long lapse of time. "Revenge is a dish that should be eaten cold," blithely urged one adage. Why an 11-year-old was being given these instructions, which were clearly hard to stomach at any age, is hard to say, but on seeing Masterchef Australia (Star World), it struck me that the dishes, that were being placed by 24, nervous, stressed out chefs, to be tasted by a panel of judges did look a little cold and congealed, and certainly not at peak levels of tasting. Yet, for all such minus points, and even though there is a huge gap in the food I watch being prepared on TV, and what I actually eat, culinary competitions, with amateur cooks trying to win the big prize, have me hooked. And there are loads of them around.

Switch to any entertainment channel, and you will inevitably find a culinary dimension: from many series of Top Chef (AXN) to Masterchef Australia to Hell’s Kitchen (TLC) to Chef and his Better Half, to Lock Stock and Two Smoking Tikkas (NDTV Good Times) to Sanjeev Kapoor’s Khana Khazana (Zee TV). On Monday, there was even a variation of Top Chef in Master Top Chef, where celebrity chefs faced off against each other.

Accompanied by unset jellies and underdone main courses, and huge quantities of salty tears (mine included), these chefs try their best in bright kitchens, full of spanking new hardware. But the funny thing is though I watch with an eagle eye, there is not a hope I can even manage to rustle up the simplest of these little offerings. At best, I may make myself some ghiya juice as recommended by Baba Ram Dev on Star News (and not by doctors), but that is as far as I will go.

What, then, is the fatal attraction? I am not even an average cook. In fact, I am not a cook at all, but nobody can move me away from the brilliance of Masterchef Australia — hot sauces, cold sweat, an unbeatable combination. And besides, these amateur chefs are such renaissance people. They come from varied backgrounds — practising lawyers, laboratory technicians and a smattering of housewives, all in a state of herbal ecstasy; cooking up a frenzy. One can only shudder at the amount of leftovers.

Ecstasy was not exactly the leading emotion Children of the Chinese Circus, aired this week on BBC World. More like agony. In a compelling documentary, young children were being ruthlessly coached at the Shanghai circus to take part in a national-level competition. At the core of this brutal coaching is an 11-year-old Xu Lu, a trapeze artiste, who is unable to make the grade. "Disaster," shouts one teacher as she hurtles again, and falls into the safety net. "Stop crying. You have to do it," yells another, as she struggles with the monkey bar, her face winced in pain.

The entire documentary is subtitled and is in Chinese-Cantonese or Mandarin — I am not sure, and without any voice over, it’s worth watching, just for the sheer pain you feel for the children.

Icky humour comes in the shape of Mr and Mrs Sharma Allahabadwale (SAB). The serial has been on air for about a month, but I have been waiting for it to improve, which could have been done in a masterful way. What was intended, I believe, was a show that was to draw out the differences between India and Bharat, but has ended up being a stupid spoof. At the centre of the comedy are Mr and Mrs Sharma (no surprises there). The father’s role is overplayed by Anajan Srivasata, who did such a brilliant role in Wagle ki Duniya.

Sharma Sr. is forever passing around gifts, and Sharma Jr. and his wife, for some reason, look and sound mentally unstable, as does their son. Only they are not. Since they come from dehat, i.e. Allahabad (though why Allahabad is considered to be part of India’s boondocks is difficult to fathom), they supposedly have this ‘simple’ air about them. Only, the show’s director seems to have confused being simple, that is, without artifice, as a reason to look and act goofy.