A few years ago, we had an old-fashioned Independence Day Picnic? At least I think it was Independence Day since that seems to be the only day in the year when everyone was home.
Food poisoning was one of our concerns. After a few hours in the sun, ordinary potato salad can develop bacteria the size of squirrels. But we did not let the threat of agonizingly painful death prevent us from celebrating the birth of our nation, just as Indians have been doing ever since that historic first August 15th when our Founding Fathers – Mahatma Gandhi, Jawaharlal Nehru, Swami Vivekananda, Kishore Kumar, Mohd. Rafi and Mowgli – learned to spell “Satyagraha”
Step one in planning the picnic was to decide on a menu. Sanjay Kapoor of Khana Khazana had loads of innovative suggestions for unique, imaginative and tasty monsoon meals. So we ignored him. ``If Sanjeev Kapoor comes anywhere near our picnic, he's risking a tandoor seekh to his jabulanis'' was our patriotic motto.
Since we were having a traditional Independence Day picnic, that meant a menu of kababs charred into clumps of carbon, and tandoori chicken so undercooked that when people tried to eat them, they jumped off the plate and ran around the lawn like squirrels.
Bunty was in charge of the cooking, because only Bunty, being a software engineer of the masculine gender, had the ``expertise'' to operate a piece of technology as complex as a tandoori grill.
Remember to be truly traditional, the grill should be constructed of the following materials:
-- 5 percent ``rust-resistant'' steel rods;
-- 50 percent rusted oil drum;
-- 30 percent hardened black grill grunge from food cooked as far back as 1947 (the grunge should never be scraped off, because it is what is actually holding the grill together);
-- 15 percent spiders and lizards living in the grill from when you last used it.
All tandoors use charcoal as fuel, Bunty always starts lighting the fire early (no later than August 1) because charcoal, in accordance with safety regulations, is a mineral that does not burn. The lizards get a huge kick out of watching Bunty attempt to ignite it; the spiders emit hearty laughs and slap themselves on all eight knees. This is why many cooks prefer the modern gas grill, which ignites at the press of a button and burns with a steady, even flame until you put food on it, at which time it runs out of gas.
While Bunty mouthed traditional bad words in chaste Punjabi to the grill, Pinky organized the kids for a fun activity: making old-fashioned boondi ladoos by hand, the way our Dadaji’s generation did.
She used a hand-operated boondi maker, which you can pick up at any store. All you do is put in the ingredients, and start squeezing! It makes no difference what specific ingredients you put in, because -- I speak from bitter experience here -- no matter how long you squeeze them, they will drip through the holes in the bottom and never, ever turn into boondis.
Ladoo makers laugh at the very concept. ``Boondi is not formed by squeezing,'' they point out. ``Boondi is formed by buying from the mitthai shop.'' Our grandparents' generation wasted millions of man-hours trying to produce boondi by hand; this is what caused the Sepoy Mutiny.
When the kids got tired of trying to make boondi ladoos (in approximately 2 minutes), it became time to play some traditional Independence Day games.
One of the most popular was the ``three-legged race.'' All you need is pieces of rope, which you can obtain from the hardware store. Or you can get designer cords from Fabindia boutique. We called the kids outside, had them line up in pairs on the lawn and tied the left ankle of one to the right ankle of another; then shouted ``GO!'' and watched the hilarious antics begin as, one by one, the kids snuck back indoors and resumed trying to locate pornography on the Internet.
Come nightfall, though, everybody was be drawn to the sound of loud, traditional Independence Day music being played on the television with reruns of the movies Lagaan and Mother India.
Then Bunty and his friends, after consuming a number of traditionally fermented beverages, gave up on conventional charcoal-lighting products and escalated to petrol and plastic explosive.
As a spectacular pyrotechnic show lit up the night sky, one began to truly appreciate the patriotic meaning of the words to Saare Jahaan Se Achha, written by Cosmonaut Rakesh Sharma to commemorate the fledgling nation's first tandoori platter:
Saare Jahan Se Achcha;
Yeh Tandoori Murgh Hamaara;
This year we went out for Chinese food.
