Holy cow! what's Lakshmi lickin'?

Delhi MiD DAY's city editor gives a beef-itting answer to all the brouhaha over a sacred animal

Delhi MiD DAY's city editor gives a beef-itting answer to all the brouhaha over a sacred animal

Food porn is good porn. It combines the two most pleasurable human activities: eating and mating. And if Nigella Lawson can earn her millions through her promiscuous cooking technique, why can't our dainty Tam-Bram Padma Lakshmi?

cow-ardice of another sort? A still from the controversial Hardee's hamburger ad that shows Padma Lakshmi devouring a beef burger

She is a celebrity cook show host too and has every right to showcase her ware (along with her food menu, in case you are interested) that made a fatwa-fatigued, balding writer eat out of her hands. But the controversy here is not about Padma the dish, but what she is endorsing on her show.u00a0

As a city pull-out reported, Padma has been shown on an ad chomping (tonguing would be a better way of putting it) a beef sandwich. Predictably, the culture keepers are furious. It's not a mere burger that Lakshmi is devouring, it's the entire Hindu culture that she is finishing off! How can an Indian Hindu, a Tam-Bram that too, eat beef and worse endorse it?

Cow is serious business in India. There are cow fan clubs, cow research centres and of course cow worshippers. There are fantastic cow theories that are propounded routinely: cowdung smeared on a wall can stop nuclear radiation; cow slaughter leads to earthquakes, plane crashes and an assortment of other disasters; cow urine is a great aphrodisiac (ugh).

In case you are interested, they sell the good potion in several RSS shops around the country. Which is all very fine. But the cow sena is not content with just theories. Routinely, Dalits and Muslims in this holy land are butchered for allegedly butchering cows. Some years ago, on the outskirts of Delhi, five Dalit men were lynched allegedly by members of a right-wing Hindu outfit for skinning a cow. The venerable Vishwa Hindu Parishad even gave a statement after the holy act: a cow's life is more precious than a Dalit's!

All these, go back to centuries-old belief that the cow being white in colour is a symbol of Aryan purity and the poor black buffalo being dark represents the dusky Dalit. Since then cows are cows and buffalos are buffalos and the world has been a happy place.

So how dare a Padma Lakshmi eat a cow! Tradition is a good thing and the cow is a fine animal and we should all fall at its feet in respect. Now, where's my beef burger?