The 111 dosas of Frankenstein Singh

Every evening as you go for your daily constitutional you pass a scrap metal yard There intact among the junk an old Fiat car stands alone in a spot unto itself You think to yourself ldquoTherersquos that ancient Fiat car againrdquoOne day you notice a wheel missing from the old lady You think ldquoThat Fiat has a missing wheelrdquoTwo days later both wheels on the far side are also gone and the car has subsided on that end leaving the vehicle anchored on a single deflated wheel ldquoOh nordquo you think ldquoThat old Fiat has lost three wheels nowrdquoBut therersquos worse to come The following week to your dismay both leftside doors are stolen exposing the interior ldquoOh poor Fiatrdquo you mutter ldquoWhat will they do to you nextrdquoThe front and back seats are next to go and soon enough the steering wheel Predictably a month later the remaining wheel and the entire body are gone except for the bonnet which too disappears in a weekHerersquos my question will you think ldquoTherersquos a Fiat with body wheels steering door and seats missingrdquo Or will you more likely think ldquoTherersquos an automobile chassis Wonder which car it belonged tordquoAt which point of gradual dismantling does it become impossible to call a Fiat a FiatLet me add a twist of lime If everything had gone except the body would you have considered it a Fiat If only the Fiat engine the heart of the beast had remained would it have qualified as a FiatYou could do the same with any other object For instance try it with your desktop computer Remove the keyboard the trackpad the mouse the OS the apps and so on one component at a time Ask yourself when it would become impossible to call it a computer anymoreAll of which brings me to Frankenstein Singh in his red turban spokesperson of Amritsarrsquos outrageous Dosa Crush named like a multiplayer online game and metastasising rapidly across the Hindi belt After murdering and dismembering the humble South Indian dosa he has reemerged with 111 terrifying new dosas by grafting bits and pieces of every cuisine known to manDosa Crush raises an existential question how many components of a dosa can you subtract or replace before it remains a dosa in name onlyIf you were South Indian as I am yoursquod know that itrsquos actually dosai derived from an earlier Sanskrit word dosaka We can fight over whether it existed as a soft rice flour pancake in 1st century Tamil Nadu or was born in 12th century Udipi as a sunsetbrown circular thing made from a riceurad batter Food historians argue about such things but we may all agree that we recognise a dosa when we see something crisp and round rolled into a geometric shapemdasha cylinder a cone a trianglemdashwith or without a savoury potato stuffingIt takes a borderline berserk Punjabi chef devoted to the doctrine of kipharakpainda to declare open season on the dosa and take it to dizzying heights or depths where no one before has dared go In this orgy of shameless creativity all condiments and spices are equal mayonnaise may marry Schezwan sauce and call itself chop suey and desi ghee and dhaniya are added after all other spice mixtures known to man have been heaped onI have watched in fascinated horror as the chef at their Nagpur branch assembled the Fire Dosa After spreading a giant batter circle he added butter Schezwan sauce chilly sauce mayonnaise tomato ketchup and liquid cheese followed by supposedly signature spices traditionally handed down from father to son Then came chopped chillies onion capsicum and tomatoes mandatory dhaniya a lot of paneer cornmdashand finally a shower of grated cheese lots of it This exuberant freeforall is cooked on top of the dosa but finally scooped up and poured into an earthenware potmdashmatkamdashadorned we are told like a bride with long cheese strands The dosa peeled and rolled into a cone is inverted into the potrsquos mouthAnd there you have it the Matka DosaAlso available are 110 other riotous combinations including the Janak Janak Payal Dosa the Pav Bhaji Dosa the Maggi Cheese Dosa the Lay Mayo Dosa the French Fries Dosa the Spring Roll Dosa the Ghotala Dosa and the Apna DosaIf you have a soft spot for Chinese things your dreams too will come true The American Chopsuey Dosa featuring an Indian variant of chopsuey the Manchurian Dosa the superior Paneer Manchurian Dosa the Schezwan Dosa the Paneer Schezwan Cheese Dosa Needless to say to be safe everything is smothered with Amul cheese at the endWell at least the dosa batter part is as per the original you say Right Wrong Punjabis are not accustomed to batters of rice and urad So Frankenstein Singh has gone straight for the jugular and created an unheard of batter with besan chickpea flour and sooji semolinaKi pharak paindaYou can reach C Y Gopinath at cygopigmailcomSend your feedback to mailbagmiddaycomThe views expressed in this column are the individualrsquos and donrsquot represent those of the paper