At the outset, let me make it abundantly clear that I am not a mushroom fancier. Never have been, and never will be. Spongy, tasteless stuff, mushrooms are usually to be found in Continental cuisine and at times Oriental establishments display them on their menus as well. In typical Indian cuisine, north or south, you rarely come across the mushroom. Though recent 'progressive and modern' households feature the item rather ostentatiously at table, particularly when guests are invited. 'Try the mushroom pakoda dear, it's yummy. Pairs well with the Chablis.'
The somewhat dubious vegetarians may take comfort in the knowledge that mushrooms are not non-vegetarian, but once you've said that, you have pretty much said it all. Your friendly dictionary defines a mushroom, or toadstool, as 'the fleshy, spore-bearing fruiting body of a fungus'. Frankly, that's enough to put anyone off his or her appetite and, if you're not careful, they can be poisonous as well. There, 'nuff said methinks. If you still wish to go and try it, on your head be it. You have been warned.
So why this elaborate anti-mushroom sentiment being expressed in this opening salvo? I'll tell you why. I am normally quite ambivalent about mushrooms and toadstools. I can take them or leave them, so long as they keep a safe distance. I am quite appreciative of them when they are featured in fairy tale illustrations - Noddy's friend Big Ears' toadstool home, for instance - and it's no skin off my nose if someone wishes to eat them. Free world and all that. Just lately however, there has been a massive hue and cry over our Honourable Prime Minister's alleged exotic liking for mushrooms.
The recently concluded Gujarat elections was notable for many dramatic turn of events, and the mushroom has played its part. Thanks to one Alpesh Thakor, OBC (Other Backward Class) leader contesting on a Congress ticket, who put a comically different spin on the PM's dietary habits. This Thakor character expressed the view at the hustings that Shri Narendra Modi 'has become fairer because he eats imported mushrooms worth Rs.4 lakhs every day!' In other words, five mushrooms costing Rs. 80,000/- apiece is allegedly consumed by our PM, day in day out, month in month out. You can do the mind-boggling sums.
As if all this was not crazy enough in this theatre of the absurd, which is the Indian elections, the Congress representative went on to state that the PM was not satisfied with Indian mushrooms, which are cheap, but had to import them from Taiwan, in order to develop that fair, and presumably lovely, complexion, which makes all the difference during campaign time. And for the clinching argument, Thakor insists that the PM was quite dark in his younger days, but now 'he is glowing like a tomato and has also become healthy'. There is no evidence to suggest that our Prime Minister was a sickly and pallid youth, but perhaps the garrulous Thakor knows something we don't.
We have not observed any immediate response from the Prime Minister or indeed, the BJP party spokesperson to this bizarre comment from a member of the opposition party. In my school days, the standard response to such outlandish tales would be, 'Put it in the 'Ripley's Believe it or Not'. However, since the estimable Ripley's hair raising, unbelievable (but apparently true) tales are no longer in currency, at least not in this part of the world, one cannot expect the PMO to come up with a smart riposte in that vein. The Prime Minister himself, quite rightly, should refrain from commenting on each and every silly comment members of the opposition choose to utter.
Mani Shankar Aiyar’s vitriolic ‘neech speech’ being an exception which the PM took full advantage of. The newly crowned Congress President, Rahul Gandhi suspended his serial brick dropping, loose cannon from the party, but most people in the know reckon that’s only an eyewash. Or perhaps, ‘Aiyarwash.’ In his defence, the errant and apparently chastised Aiyar did say that his Hindi is not quite pluperfect, but everyone who knows him is aware that, if anything, his Hindi is infinitely superior to his mother tongue, Tamil. A bit of an own goal this for the Congress, and doubtless, the BJP apparatchiks are laughing out of the other side of their mouths. With enemies like this who needs friends, they seem to be saying with a chortle.
Not all heads of state were overly fond of exotic vegetables. Republican President George H.W. Bush, the senior of the two Bushes who occupied the White House, detested broccoli intensely. He made no bones about declaring his hostility towards this health giving lookalike sister vegetable of the cauliflower. Here's what the former President of the United States had to say, 'I do not like broccoli. And I haven't liked it since I was a little kid and my mother made me eat it. And I'm President of the United States and I'm not going to eat any more broccoli'. That's telling Mummy! This caused quite a stir at the time in the US with many Moms and Dads coming out in favour of the maligned broccoli, and voicing their protests vociferously while seeking a Presidential pardon for the condemned vegetable! The comedians and satirists had a ball lampooning the brouhaha surrounding Bush and the broccoli.
To the best of my knowledge, we have not had an official response from the PMO to the Congress Party’s dig over the mushroom issue. We are also aware that the Prime Minister holds his mother in great reverence, so he is unlikely to bring her into the mushroom discourse as George Bush did vis-à-vis his anti-broccoli stance. Now that he has retained Gujarat, albeit by a whisker, the PM can ignore the issue altogether. Perhaps the citizens of India would be satisfied with a brief statement on where he stood on l'affaire mushroom, be they from Taiwan or Timbuctoo.
(The author is a brand consultant with an interest in music, cricket, humour and satire)
