Tag: deve gowda

PM’s Eleven

The first time I ever heard of Davos was in 1997, when then Indian Prime Minister HD Deve Gowda attended the conference in the ski resort and gave a speech. He was heavily pilloried by the Kannada media, and given the moniker “Davos Gowda”.

Maybe because of all the attention Deve Gowda received for the trip, and not in a good way, no Indian Prime Minister ventured to go there for another twenty years. Until, of course, Narendra Modi went there earlier this week and gave a speech that apparently got widely appreciated in China.

There is another thing that connects Modi and Deve Gowda as Prime Ministers (leaving aside trivialties such as them being chief ministers of their respective states before becoming Prime Ministers).

Back in 1996 when Deve Gowda was Prime Minister, Rahul Dravid,  Venkatesh Prasad and Sunil Joshi made their Test debuts (on the tour of England). Anil Kumble and Javagal Srinath had long been fixtures in the Indian cricket team. Later that year, Sujith Somasunder played a couple of one dayers. David Johnson played two Tests. And in early 1997, Doddanarasaiah Ganesh played a few Test matches.

In case you haven’t yet figured out, all these cricketers came from Karnataka, the same state as the Prime Minister. During that season, it was normal for at least five players in the Indian Eleven to be from Karnataka. Since Deve Gowda had become Prime Minister around the same time, there was no surprise that the Indian cricket team was called “PM’s Eleven”. Coincidentally, the chairman of selectors at that point in time was Gundappa Vishwanath, who is also from Karnataka.

The Indian team playing in the current Test match in Johannesburg has four players from Gujarat. Now, this is not as noticeable as five players from Karnataka because Gujarat is home to three Ranji Trophy teams. Cheteshwar Pujara plays for Saurashtra, Parthiv Patel and Jasprit Bumrah play for Gujarat, and Hardik Pandya plays for Baroda. And Saurashtra’s Ravindra Jadeja is also part of the squad.

It had been a long time since once state had thus dominated the Indian cricket team. Perhaps we hadn’t seen this kind of domination since Karnataka had dominated in the late 1990s. And it so happens that once again the state dominating the Indian cricket team happens to be the Prime Minister’s home state.

So after a gap of twenty one years, we had an Indian Prime Minister addressing Davos. And after a gap of twenty one years, we have an Indian cricket team that can be called “PM’s Eleven”!

As Baada put it the other day, “Modi is the new Deve Gowda. Just without family and sleep”.

Update: I realised after posting that I have another post called “PM’s Eleven” on this blog. It was written in the UPA years.

Mutter Paneer for Breakfast!!

So when our newly-recruited cook told us last week that she knows how to cook North Indian dishes, and when we bought Paneer and Frozen Peas at the supermarket yesterday, I assumed that we’ll be having Mutter Paneer for dinner tonight. The cook comes in around 6am, a little after I leave for the gym, so it’s usually the wife’s responsibility to tell her what to make.

And so I return from the gym and find out to my horror that we’re going to have Mutter Paneer for breakfast instead! I mean, who has mutter paneer for breakfast? Or even, who has chapati for breakfast? Isn’t it a dinner item? Well, that’s been one of the longest standing disputes the wife and I have had ever since we started living together.

She comes from a family of rice-eaters (she’s technically Gult, I’ve told you right?), without anyone in her immediate ancestry suffering from any lifestyle disease (heart/diabetes/cholestrol/etc.). And so, they’ve been used to having rice for meals. Rice for lunch, and rice for dinner. And occasionally chapati for breakfast.

I remember this being the case in my family, too, when I was a small kid, but things changed sometime in the 90s. My parents were both plump by then, and for a variety of other reasons, we switched to having oil-free chapatis (phulkas) for dinner. And now that chapati had become a dinner item, it automatically stopped being a breakfast item, and so for breakfast we restricted ourselves to the “traditional stuff” like dosa, akki rotti, uppit, avalakki, etc. (I hate homemade idlis so that was never a part of the menu). And for dinner, apart from chapati, we also started having ragi mudde (ragi balls, made world famous all over India by former PM HD Deve Gowda).

And so the battle begins. She, who has grown up always eating chapati for breakfast, and never for dinner. And I, having been looking at chapati as solely a dinner item for the last twenty years. Ok, chapati and onion-potato palya for breakfast is acceptable. But Mutter Paneer for breakfast? You gotta be kidding me!

Anyways, the Mutter Paneer was good, and I did need a high-calorie meal after the gym session, so this cribbing here is more for the sake of cribbing rather than a genuine crib. Also, it is possible that it’s healthier to reserve the high-density food for breakfast, and have something light for dinner (I admit mutter paneer for dinner isn’t that good for health). But mutter paneer for breakfast and then rasam rice for dinner?

I’m sorry but I’m not a big fan of rasam. I find it too low-density and not filling enough. And in order to fill myself I need to eat a lot of rice, and eating a lot of rice at night makes me sometimes feel gross as soon as I get up the next morning.

Ok I’ll stop cribbing now. And I guess I’m a CHoM.