So much of pak, pak, pak-ing going on, I tell you! All for a name! That too half of it! And to top it all – a name which has already been changed from its original, to suit the pronunciation standards of people who have no clue how to say it properly!
A sweet dish from down south has just been dragged under the microscope for no fault of its own. People from Karnataka recently woke up to the news that their favourite sweet Mysore pak has just been re-named as Mysore shree!
Shrieeeeek! Whyyyy? The poor thing was simply minding its own business since donkey’s years, in hideous shades of yellow, orange and brown in sweet stalls around the country and suddenly someone thinks its name reminds them of the neighbouring country! Ouch!
Who would ever have thought that a dastardly act of terror unleashed in the north of the country would bring about a re-christening, somewhere in the west of the country of a sweet which originated from the south of the country! What a web of convoluted tangles we live in.
So, let me tell you a story. A real one.
Once upon a time, fairly long ago … ok, in the early 20th C, for those insisting on a time frame, there lived a king – Maharaja Krishnaraja Wodeyar IV, of Mysore. Working in the smoky depths of his large royal kitchen was his talented royal cook, Kakasura Madappa, whose job it was to cook up innovative dishes for the royal dining table.
One day, running short of ideas of what to serve, the ingenious chef put his mind to work, and had an aha moment when he put together some gram flour, equal amounts of sugar, unhealthy amounts of pure ghee, and what bubbled up at him from a deep cauldron was a frothy, buttery, melt-in-the-mouth bit of heaven, which he then cut into small rectangle pieces and had them dispatched to the king, on a golden platter. The king, on tasting just a bit of the thing, was instantly transported to paradise and back. Reeling from the heady feeling as if celestial dancers had just done a mesmerising jig on his tongue, he summoned the cook forthwith and asked him, “Yenappa Madappa, yen idhu adhbutha sihi baksha?” Oi, dude Madappa, what is this amazing sweet?
To which the latter, not having had time to give a name to his invention, thought fast on his feet and came up with, “Mysore paka!” And I like to imagine that he was immediately rewarded with a gold chain from the king’s neck. Thus, my friends, was born that most famed sweet from Mysuru, the royal state of Karnataka, a royal sweet that has travelled across the country and far beyond. In its different avatars – the soft, moist, drenched-in-ghee version which slides down your throat like ghee on a hot spoon, or the dry crunchy version with tiny moon-like craters on it, it has withstood the winds of change around the country, and stood strong and proud as Karnataka’s gift to the world, a sweet made with and named after the sticky sugar syrup referred to as paaka or paka in Kannada. Point to be noted, m’lord!
And now some over-zealous restaurant owner decides to demonstrate his patriotism through an innocuous item on his menu card. Just because the poor guy and many other guys like him are not aware that we southies (unlike the rest of the country who chop off the tail end of words abruptly), like to add a little sing-song alaap to the end of our words and thus Kannad is actually Kannada and Karnatak is really Karnataka! And as for Mysore pak? Definitely not shree, puhleese!
All ye movers and shree’kers … just add an aaa to pak and I promise the poor sweet won’t remind you of that country, ever!
In the meantime, can we chill and have some mysore paka and hot pak-oras please?
I would like some chai too, but somehow, it reminds me of China!
And we can’t have that now, can we?
Disclaimer
Views expressed above are the author’s own.
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