My wife is not gullible; not gullible at all. But propaganda always affects her decision-making. Ever since I can remember, she has made me and others around her go along with her choices. We changed soaps from Cinthol to Medimix to Santoor - solely because one jingle sounded nicer to her than the other. I had to switch from Rupa to VIP to Jockey or nothing, depending on which film actor was endorsing which underwear. Unfortunately, the same applies to our gastronomic choices. It is the hype that makes the lady of the house decide which foods we shall eat. Consequently, at different times, we have consumed vast quantities of quinoa or chia or sunflower seeds or cinnamon sticks. My muted complaints against fennel pancakes went unheeded, as did my protests against tofu-a-la-king. But they were all transitory fads that soon blew over, like some tropical storm or a midsummer’s nightmare.
I had got used to these passing whims and mastered the art of battening down for the brief periods that the craze lasted. Soon enough, the little woman would tire of the novelty and we would be back to wheat and rice and other familiar fare. Sometimes, even when she did not want to, the trend would change because some high priestess of food fashion would decree that chicken fat or carrot leaves were passe and the ‘in’ thing now was pork from Pindari or the sepals of Salvia from Supaul. I suffered through every passing fancy, but none lasted long enough to permanently scar either my psyche or my appetite.
Unfortunately, this stupid millet business started last year and even the FAO jumped on the bandwagon. This craze has now been going on for far too long and I miss my wheat flour, the maida, the dalia and the sooji. In the first flush of hyperbole, the missus adopted the millet route and we started quaffing the horrible stuff by the ton. I had never imagined that millets could come in such variety, but the missus became chummy with them all, and in their various avatars too - as grain, in semi-broken form and even as flour. She also learnt how to dish out the stuff in camouflage, in the form of noodles, pasta and crepes. She insisted that millets were good for her eyesight and for my sciatica. She insisted that every millet dish was yummy! But she never fooled me - because while declaring a dish to be yummy, she had the same crafty expression that she has when she feeds our dog his deworming medicine.
Over the past year, my wife and I had several showdowns over kodo and ragi and jowar. Ultimately, out of sheer fatigue, she promised not to buy any more millets. But fate keeps finding strange ways of getting around this promise and millets keep sneaking into our kitchen. And once the millet - any millet and in any form - has come in, my wife refuses to throw it out. She believes there should be no waste of any grain - no matter how coarse or uncouth it might be.
First, it was an old friend of mine from Patna who sent us two kilos of ‘madua’ without any provocation. Just a few years ago, madua was not even considered worth eating. It was the grain of the truly unfortunate - people so far below the poverty line that they were not even aware that such a line existed. Just when we managed to finish the stock from Bihar, my former office colleagues held a birthday bash for me. I was surprised to find that millets can be used for making not only dosas and idlis, but also dhokla and kachoris. Ugh! When I was leaving, a beribboned packet was placed in my car. I thanked my friends for the party and the birthday gift, which I presumed was a nice single malt or at least a fine selection of Swiss chocolates. But no! When I unwrapped the gift at home, I discovered that some twisted minds had deemed it appropriate to give bajra atta to a retired colleague on his birthday! Four packets of that vile stuff!
So the little woman and I ate bajra rotis for I don’t know how many days. Just as there appeared to be some light at the end of the tunnel, fate struck another blow, and in a totally unexpected manner. My wife, who enjoys her game of tambola in the ladies’ club but has never even gotten a loser’s prize, won a full house! And the prize was ten kilograms of assorted millets!
We had barely started consuming that stock when, last week, our daughter’s in-laws - who otherwise are perfectly normal people - sent us a hamper of finger, foxtail, barnyard and other weirdly named millets as an anniversary gift. I begged my wife to throw the stuff away or simply give it all to the maid. But she refused. “You know how talkative the maid is, don’t you? What will our sambandhis think when they visit us next and Phoolwanti waxes eloquent about the tasty millets sent by them?”
So whether it is by accident or design, we continue to be neck deep in millets and I for one am fed up, literally. I think it is time people woke up to the fact that millets are passe and beyond their ‘best by’ date. Even the FAO has declared that the International Year of the Millet has ended. Wake up, my countrymen! Salvation for all of us lies only in the total demilletisation of India.
K.C. Verma is a former chief of R&AW.
