Eggs, sugar,and pizzas....

This weekend the Economic Times had a piece by Vikram Doctor on the use of eggs in Indian cuisine. He made the interesting point that the domestic hens the world over are probably descended from the wild indian fowl and it is therefore strange that many people in the country shy away from eating an egg. Even an unfertilised egg. The piece also had curious references to indian sweets made from eggs. I was not aware of these. In particular I liked the idea of the Moplah sweet called mutta mala which is a string of batter fried egg yolks. The theme of food continued to resonate in other pieces in the newspapers that day. There a was this piece in the Hindu about a book called The Romance of a Naxalite written by Vineet Aggarwal a police officer. This is based on his experiences in Gadchirauli in Maharashtra. What caught my eye was his comment that people in that area are so poor that sugar and salt are luxuries for them. They leave their food exposed to ants because they say that after the ants have spent time on the food in large numbers the food tastes sweet from secretions that they leave behind. The theme of food recurred in another unusual piece the same weekend in the story of the lady who has come up with an unusual approach to track down men who do not fulfill child support commitments and vanish by changing their home and city so that they cannot be traced and held to account. She reasoned that these people would be too lazy to cook and too scared to be recognised to go out to eat. She further reasoned that such people would be too irresponsiblt to eat healthy and must therefore be ordering pizzas from home. She is trying to convince pizza chains to allow pasting a sheet with the photographs of such 'scofflaws' on the pizza delivery boxes - presumably so that the delivery boys can identify them and report to the police!