Humour columnist Gene Weingarten learned the hard way recently that you can't just diss Indian cuisine and accept everyone to be okay with it. Didn't anyone tell him about the outrage epidemic that refused to subside in India? We are a society that takes pride in our capability to troll every opinion that we do not approve of. It requires special talent to have the amount of dedication, patience and time required, to chase down any critique of anything remotely Indian till the offender offers an apology, simply to have some mental peace.
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Washington Post columnist Gene Weingarten recently wrote an article titled "You can't make me eat these foods." Calling his palate "unusually sophisticated", Weingarten dedicated a whole paragraph in his article to criticise Indian food. Weingarten wrote that he doesn't understand the culinary principle behind curry-driven Indian food, writing, "If you think Indian curries taste like something that could knock a vulture off a meat wagon, you do not like a lot of Indian food."
To give you some context this writer also doesn't like hazelnuts, balsamic vinegar, pizza or hot dogs with more than two toppings and sweet pickles. He also confessed that his own editor thinks that his palate is immature and seems to categorically dislike and whine about many foods, like a toddler. Another fact you need to keep in mind is that Weingarten is not a food critique, or culinary expert, and neither was this column a food review. It was just a humour column written by a grown-up man with an immature palate (his editor's words, not mine).
— Anand Giridharadas @ The.Ink (@AnandWrites) August 23, 2021
Surprised tht someone who has zilch info on spices and whose zero taste buds can critique a cuisine ! Speaks a lot about the publication on how they r run
Am I eating leftover Indian food for lunch that I purchased last night, simply for the reasons that it's fucking delicious, and Gene Weingarten is a low-key racist, tastebuds-lacking asshat?
The writer also received backlash from US-based celebrities of Indian origin. "What in the white nonsense is this?" tweeted Top Chef host and author Padma Lakshmi. Actor-producer Mindy Kaling too called out the columnist for his taste, tweeting, "You don’t like a cuisine? Fine. But it’s so weird to feel defiantly proud of not liking a cuisine. You can quietly not like something too."
So intense was the backlash against the humour columnist's article that he had to tweet an apology so that social media could dial it down. "I should have named a single Indian dish, not the whole cuisine, & I do see how that broad-brush was insulting. Apologies," he tweeted.
From start to finish plus the illo, the column was about what a whining infantile ignorant d---head I am. I should have named a single Indian dish, not the whole cuisine, & I do see how that broad-brush was insulting. Apologies.(Also, yes, curries are spice blends, not spices.)
Indian cuisine is one of the most unique and diverse ones across the world, there is no doubt about it. This is something that numerous food bloggers, chefs, celebrities and authors have sworn by time and again. So, why are we fussing so much about a negative take on it by a picky eater? Are we so sensitive and insecure that we can't ignore a paragraph in a satirical column? Yes, Weingarten's take is ignorant and cliched, reducing Indian cuisine to simply being curry-based, but it was also never meant to be taken seriously and we did just that.
If you feel that we have won this battle, think again. What does a coerced apology by intensely trolling him even mean? Does it change his opinion of Indian food? Did the trolling course-correct his ignorance? The only thing we have achieved here is exposing our capability to be triggered by the most trivial of things, and be warned, social media and publications will use it to garner more views for themselves.
For our own mental peace, we need to ask ourselves- why doesn't letting go of trivial matter come to easily these days?
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