REFLECTIONS

It all started with my invitation to a good friend to come over for a vegetarian dinner ‘on a banana leaf’ on the last day of Ramadan. “What! No biryani? No kababs? A Muslim dinner and no biryani?” he went on and on. The grumbling continued till he had eaten this meal and folded the banana leaf and left, much to my relief!
I have nothing against biryani, but I have always dreamt that if Muslims can get over their obsession with biryani for every occasion, life could be simpler for them and for people around them.
A Muslim friend of mine who shares my views had some friends over for lunch on Eid day, and she very reluctantly had to get ‘Muslim biryani, loaded with hunks of meat floating in oil and chicken kababs’ cooked for that is what her friends were expecting. The guests arrived, but the man she had hired to cook the food called to say that the mutton-man had ditched him, so the biryani would be delayed. My poor friend’s blood pressure rose up, I was afraid she would suffer a heart attack.
Finally, when the biryani arrived, the mutton was half cooked! My friend found a gaping hole in her purse after paying for the massive load of half-cooked biryani, and she is still recovering from hyper-tension days after Eid is over—caused by the furore over the delayed biryani.
This led me to do some research on biryani, as I mused on how this dish was controlling the lives of millions of Muslims across the world. According to one version, the term biryani is derived from the Farsi word ‘Birian,’ which means ‘fried before cooking.’ Based on the name and cooking style, one can conclude that the dish originated in Persia and/or Arabia. It could have come from Persia via Afghanistan to north India. It could have also been brought by the Arab traders via the Arabian Sea to south India.
During the Mughal rule, Lucknow, Awadh, produced a particular version of the dish which was named ‘Awadhi Biryani’. In 1856, the British sent the Awadh Nawab Wajid Ali Shah to Calcutta, which gave rise to ‘Calcutta Biryani’. When Aurangzeb installed Nizam-ul-Mulk as ruler of Hyderabad, and someone else as the Nawab of Arcot, it gave rise to ‘Hyderabadi Biryani’ and ‘Arcot Biryani’.
Legend has it that Timur the Lame brought biryani down from Kazakhstan via Afghanistan to northern India. According to another legend, Mumtaz Mahal (the beauty who sleeps in the Taj Mahal) concocted this dish as a “complete meal” to feed the Mughal army. Yet others insist that the dish really originated in West Asia, where nomads would bury an earthen pot full of meat, rice and spices in a pit. Eventually, the pot was dug up, opened out and its contents, the biryani, gorged upon.
Almost every Muslim community today has its own version of the biryani. So, you have the Memoni Biryani, the Irani Biryani, the Kashmiri Bhuna Gosht Biryani and the Katche Ghost ki Biryani, and who knows how many more! The cooking methods for each type of biryani are different and elaborate, requiring patience and loads of time in the kitchen.
This little bit of research helped me to arrive at some conclusions. Biryani is part of the culture of certain Muslim communities, but is not part of their religion. It is not something obligatory. If a Muslim does not eat biryani or does not feed it to someone else, he or she is not committing any sin! There is no rule-book that says that biryani has to be prepared on all occasions, be it Eid or a conference, a birthday or death. Life on this earth can go on peacefully even without biryani. The sun will rise and the moon will continue to shine without having to eat mounds of mutton and rice.
For biryani loyalists, this may sound like blaspheming biryani. But, remember, I only said biryani is a slice of culture, not part of the religion. Before I utter more ‘blasphemous’ statements like “ban the biryani,” I also want to meet the desert nomads who buried an earthen pot full of meat, rice and spices in a pit, to ask them why on earth they dug up the pot again! Because out of the pot came the headache called biryani!