Conditioned taste buds demand seasoning of food with onions, as otherwise the taste is ‘woody’. To satisfy these taste buds, someone has to peel, snip the tuft on top and hive off the dried roots on the rounded bottom of the onion bulb.
The onion bulb comes in many shapes and may have a single or multiple bulb lets. It is a class apart – asexual in vegetative propagation, ardhanareeswar in veggies kingdom.
That is why; it does not show a gender bias. It has to be brought to the market in well ventilated, jute suits.
If not handled carefully, onions go bad and you have a hell of a task on hand in segregating them from the ones that might go bad! At this point it is the trader who cries.
Take heart! The onion’s wrath is not selective, as neither chef nor farmer is spared. The former cries on a bumper crop or over an inundated field, at harvest time. The latter, chopping it for dressing or cooking.
The process of cutting onions for use is done with a surgeon’s precision and a knife as sharp as his scalpel. Too shallow, the malady survives and too deep the patient suffers – therefore you got to be careful with your dear onions.
After conveniently positioning it on the cutting board, the vivisection starts – parting and chopping. All the while, the onion is not taking it lying down – it rebels.
Lachrymal and nasal glands are sympathetically excited to produce tears and a running nose – as if to mark its demise.
This twin attack might remind you of a soldier facing gun shots from two different directions. They rest not before extracting their obituaries, in instalments!
Finally, it is time for you to wreak your revenge – by boiling or deep frying the chopped onions, a fitting and tearful farewell.
The ordeals undergone & obituaries to be written are electives. The first choice falls on the home maker or on the willing assistants.
In the worst case, there is no option given here, the owner of the craving taste buds gets the mantle – to peel, snip, cut and chop with or without crying & sneezing!
The onion is a contended species, willing to spare the limelight space with heavy weight s like gold and feather weights like tomato.
Media and agitated parliamentarians discuss the onion crisis – stagnation, shortage and soaring commodity prices.
Though tomato might get to share the limelight with onion – the onion has the last laugh. It is the only vegetable that is capable of making you cry while buying as well as just before use in the kitchen! Telemarketers will not help.
If allowed to go unchecked, this crisis has the potential to vote-out an incumbent government or at least to manage and find space in election manifesto.
It does not even spare men, who work away from their houses, depending on hotel-wallahs for food. These men shed more tears for onions, than while chopping them in the kitchen.
Onion containing dishes cost more or the men are advised to bring the needed onions, by themselves – a “you -bring-I-cook” syndrome.
The pity is that nobody has come up with a dried and ready to use onion powder like the 2-minute noodles. Are our botanists, not contemplating to genetically modify the onions?
They can solve two problems:
Avoid the tearful ceremonies in the kitchens. Make the shoots to grow drooping towards the ground or parallel to the ground. This may bring down the artificial & seasonal fluctuations in onion’s price.
A Nobel thought: Only the biologists can help to wipe off the onion tears. Genetically modify it - to yield crop in 100 days, to survive even under submerged conditions with out going bad, to make it grow in all types of soils and if possible to remove the tear causing chemical substance from the onions.
Even if this mega GE project achieves only a partial success, at least the tear part would be removed from the eyes of the users!
The onion has immortalized itself in life and death - many dishes like French fired onions, French onion soup, Indian raita, onion vada, onion dosa etc;
In addition it has a great but a simple philosophy to teach.
Keep on peeling the layered skin; you are left with nothing (regional languages have such flavoured sayings).
If you cause suffering to some one, you will either be boiled or fried.
If you let your taste buds rule, you will end up crying and sneezing.
Governments are elected basis onion prices. (Isn’t this true for Delhi elections?)
Tears or no tears, tear into the succulent onion – my fellow brave hearts!
If you cause suffering to some one, you will either be boiled or fried.
ReplyDeleteLooks like a curse on onion lovers.
What about the challenge to biologists or whatever they are... th academicians have let down the people who provided the funds for them to do research.. A farmer could have been appealed to. He/she would have definitely done all these and much more..