The renowned, now nonagenarian author, novelist , playwright (winner of Sahitya Akademi and Sangeeth Nataka Awards and Padmashree), and a doyen of classical Tamil literature, Sri. Indira Parthasarathy ( pen name “Eepa”) lives in quiet retirement in his comfortable retreat and Athulya Home for Seniors (they call it “Assisted Living Residence” these days) in a salubrious semi-urban, beach-side neighbourhood of South Chennai.
This morning Eepa forwarded to me a WhatsApp message about a most unusual subject-matter : the Tamilian’s all-time favourite breakfast dish of “Iddly”!
Eepa’s playscripts in the past, I know, have inspired quite a few cinema playscripts in the Tamil and Malayalam film-worlds. So, at the first glance at his WhatsApp message, I thought it was going to be something maybe to do with the widely advertised just about-to be-released pot-boiler Tamil movie in cinema-theatres and with the intriguing title : “Iddly Kadai” … Iddly Cafe !
But no, Eepa was done for good with anything to do with Cinema… His message was about something altogether more pedestrian, quotidian … and more hilarious ! Eepa’s forwarded message was about a Tweet on X posted by Shashi Tharoor, the dashing man who all English-speaking Indians love as an Anglophilic walking Oxford Dictionary and a Dr. Samuel Johnson wannabe.
This was Eepa’s message:
Someone on Twitter called Iddly as ‘steamed regret’ and below is Shashi Tharoor’s reply for the same — from a news article. That remark prompted Tharoor to offer a poetic defence of the South Indian staple: “Poor soul has clearly never had a good one. A truly great idli is a cloud, a whisper, a perfect dream of the perfectibility of human civilisation,” he wrote. He went on to add: “It’s a sublime creation, a delicate, weightless morsel of rice and lentil, steamed to an ethereal fluffiness that melts on the tongue. With the right accompaniments, it is the culinary equivalent of a Beethoven symphony, a Tagore sangeet, a Husain painting, a Tendulkar century. To call such a thing ‘regret’ is to have no soul, no palate, no appreciation for the finest achievements of South Indian culture. I can only feel pity for you.”
Reading Eepa’s message made me chuckle to myself. I’m not an Anglophile but I have read Tharoor’s books and op-eds and have nothing but admiration for his elegant prose and eloquent speeches in nearly perfect Queen’s English and Oxonian diction. The phrase “Iddly is a regret” made me wonder if it was a poetic coup de grace in an attack against Tamilian tastes in general or whether it was disguised satirical disdain for their dietary preferences.
Iddly, a staple breakfast food in South India, is often stereotyped this way in North Indian and global memes as too “plain” compared to spicier or richer preparations. Such jokes might not reflect genuine dislike but playful banter regarding cultural preferences. Calling Iddly a “steamed regret” is a tongue-in-cheek, somewhat sarcastic critique implying that Iddly is bland, uninspiring, or disappointing as a food item, especially compared to other more flavorful or visually appealing dishes. It is a comment rooted in stereotype: Iddly, being soft, plain, and mild, dull or lacking excitement…. a near-accurate caricature of most mild-mannered boring Tambrahms like me, perhaps ?
This type of remark is common on social media, where users exaggerate for humor or effect.
Shashi Tharoor’s own poetic, rhetorical defence highlighted however that such a remark overlooks the aesthetic and culinary subtlety iddly represents in South Indian tradition. According to him, a well-made Iddly is a piece of art that has no parallel anywhere else in India, if not the world. Only a person with a very superficial sense of gastronomy would ever dismiss it as “regret“.
While Tharoor’s rather foppish defence of Iddly did amuse me very much , what however made me burst out laughing was Eepa’s final wry, dry, sardonic and witty comment which was a masterpiece of a tail-piece for Tharoorian excess:
Eepa said : “Tharoor would not have gone to all that great trouble defending Iddly if only he had but only once come to our Home here and tasted the Iddly served by Athulya’s kitchen”!
😂😁
Sudarshan Madabushi