Jalebi Uncoiled: April 2013

Monday, April 1, 2013

20. The 'solutionism' of our times

Within hours of its invention a few years ago, the phrase had gone viral with denizens in Bangalore. Like a multi-utility vehicle, its strength lay in its convenient application across situations: those violating traffic rules use it; those short of civic sense use it to excuse themselves; and those teasing girls get away using it. Just say Swalpa Adjust Maadi and you could be cool about your action. It is a Kannada remix for saying 'adjust to the situation'. wherein 'swalpa' means 'a little' and 'maadi' stands for 'do'.

Why would it spread so thick and fast? With 'solutionism' being the new belief or ideology amongst youth, perhaps the idea has been to identify those 'tools' that could offer instant 'solutions' by presuming to be intrinsically creative. For the carefree youth, the world and our relationship to it are puzzles to be solved. Complexity, ambiguity, uncertainty and disagreement are all confused renditions of problems. If one phrase could strike all such puzzles than let that be! And, why not?

Though novel in its approach, Swalpa Adjust Maadi offers a non-contentitious 'fix'. It compromises on the situation by taking a status quo position. It is more about adjustment than transformation, an approach that emerges from a generation mistrustful of government and the state, but enamoured by its own capacity to manage its well-being. A tech-savvy generation which surfs information and searches solutions at the click of the button has only gone by the entrenched notion that 'convenience' and not 'contention' is the solution. In the face of all the array of major problems confronting us, Swalpa Adjust Maadi could indeed help slip past numerous small problems at hand!

The worrying side of this invention, according to 'Citizens Against the Swalpa Adjust Maadi', is that it helps settle for anything 'less than hundred per cent', justifying the widely held notion that we are as a nation more 'satisfier' than 'maximizer'. Our roads may be clogged; our infrastructure crumbling; our public institutions decaying but we should take pleasure in the small things and be content with it. If Swalpa Adjust Maadi is what the youth find comfort in than those hoping for an Arab Spring in India must go on a long vacation!

The World of Jalebi

In 1870, Hobson-Jobson (a glossary of Anglo-Indian terms) specified that 'jelaubee' originates from the Arabic word zalabiya and the Persian word zalibiya and described it as 'a rich sweetmeat made of sugar and ghee, with a little flour, melted and trickled into a pan so as to form a kind of interlaced work, when baked.' Recipes for that original zalabiya have been found in West Asian cookbooks dating back to the 10th and 13th century, and ancient texts indicate that by the 15th century, the dish had made its journey from Persia to the tables of rich Indian merchants.

Meanwhile, this irresistible concoction seems to have travelled to other lands as well. In Lebanon, the sweetmeat is shaped like a finger rather than a swirl. In Afghanistan, it’s eaten alongside fish in the winter months. In Egypt, the Jewish community makes it to celebrate Hanukkah. It is a salutary reminder that food and language, arts and ideas, values and lifestyles are all products of give-and-take between the peoples of the world.

From The Golden Oldie by Shabnam Minwalla

Jalebi Management

Can the mouth-watering jalebi orchestrate global business? The uniform taste of the sweetmeat from its central form to its irregular extremities is worth imitating for any organisation's smooth functioning, says this book. "A jalebi connects at different fragile points to get bigger and bigger. The moral fibre in any country or any corporate culture can also grow when thought is not confined within the box,' writes Shombit Sengupta in Jalebi Management, a provocative out-of-the-box (sweet) management book based on critical social observation.