Brands are now catering to both personal and formal spaces. While a plethora of heat and eat products have replaced home cooking, a new variety of serials are making home cooking easier. Aashirvaad Atta with real methi leaves is empowering housewives to make tasty methi parat-has, rotis, pooris and theplas, in a jiffy
We were discussing the great Indian tradition of khatirdari (hospitality) when my dadi (grandmother) told me this story of her life. It was 1950, my maternal grandfather used to work in Calcutta at that time and his house was the hub of almost every family member of his native village who would come unannounced for treatment in the city medical college. It was late at night. Dadi, after one of her gruelling days’ work at a kitchen, had finally come out feeding the huge family.
Dousing the fire of the coal burnt chulha, she had taken her refreshing night bath. Before hitting the bed, she had the habit of sitting for some time on the first floor balcony looking at the deserted street. That night there was no exception to this rule. In came a horse drawn carriage and noisily stopped before her house gate. Half a dozen people, including a couple of women, came down completely unannounced to stay. They were distant relatives from the village. The primary objective of this unannounced visit was, as usual, medical treatment of one of the members. The secondary objective of the rest, including the patient, was religious tourism in and around the city. Poor dadi! The chulha was lit, dal, chawal and sabzi were cooked and served to the guests and she knew no sleep that night.
Great Indian hospitality! Has it totally vanished, most probably not. At least not from the minds of Indian housewives. Till 80s, I have seen there was an unwritten rule of guest entertainment in our house. Pre-lunch guest would have lunch and late evening guests would have dinner with us. We would get sweets from the nearby sweet meat shops. Those extra sweet items would differentiate the guests’ food plates, much to our disliking, from rest of us. Interestingly, the number of guests would determine the number of these additional sweets dishes. Housewives were used to this culture and those who were money conscious would keep stocks of home-made cookies and laddos so that they had to spend less buying more number of items from shops.
I have observed that the Indian hospitality is highly hierarchical; different relations need to be treated with different degree of respect and food is one strong signifier of it. Sweet meat shops keep oversized sweets to cater to the demands of hierarchy. Son-in-law is a very special guest and each and every food item in West Bengal skyrockets on the son-in-law’s day when the mother-in-law especially invites him to have food in her house. While haat ka khana (cooked with own hands) adds a personal touch of the hostess to the food sweet meat and misti dahi (sweet curd) from renowned shops would underline the formal side of mehman nawaaji.
Brands are now catering to both these personal and formal spaces. While plethora of heat and eat products have replaced home cooking, a new variation of serials are making home cooking easier. Recent Aashirvaad atta with real methi leaves are empowering housewives to make tasty methi parathas and roties, poories, theplas, in a jiffy. Today families are disintegrating; there are lesser and lesser numbers of people to help prepare the meals for the guests. Even in the modern middle class families, once children go to a different city to work or study there is hardly anybody to turn to. Rather children, when they visit home on rare vacations, are now the new guests. As much as mom wants to feed them, the children would rather love to spend quality time with parents. They would want them more in the drawing room talking and gossiping with them than spending those precious moments in the kitchen.
Home delivery has changed the dynamics of home cooking. Recent Zomato commercials are talking about how children order food on Zomato before reaching home so that mom and in some cases, as the ad shows, divorced dad can be given relief for cooking food and offspring nawaazi. If dad is highly relieved, giving relief to a mom, especially when she wants to cook for her children, can be a sensitive task. One has to be careful not to hurt her image as the provider of wholesome food. In the Zomato commercial, mother questions the wholesomeness of the food ordered by the son from Zomato as she starts serving it. The son comes up with a smart rejoinder, “Now that you have touched the food ma, this becomes ma ki haat ka khana and that should take care of any shortcomings in this food,” and resolves the tension.
Back to the story of mehman nawaazi, Coke decided to take the tension of a housewife carrying the burden of appropriateness in hospitality head on and resolved to de-burden her. The brand stands for a beacon of happiness. It believes that formality takes away the warmth of relationships. The brand says socialising is about getting together and sharing some good times and prescribes informality and light heartedness. In a playful mood, the brand advises the housewife, don’t be so formal with your relations, Rishtedaron ko dost banao, Coca-Cola pilao (make your relations your friends and greet them with Coca-Cola) was the line of Coke’s 2014 campaign. TVCs revolve around getting rid of formalities between relationships, with Coke acting as an ice-breaker.
Having unburdened the housewife this year, the brand explores a wider canvass of Indian mehmaan nawaazi and takes it to a new level where vada pav is being served with Coke, paranthas are being gulped down with Coke, while watching cricket matches 4’s and 6’s are being celebrated with shots of Cola. Coke is getting greedy and is not ready to leave any slot vacant in the F&B space a la Cadbury chocolate. A decade back, the brand deciphered the desi code of thanda and equated with the matlab of Coca-Cola. Today probably it is trying to use the code to the hilt in every culinary aspect pan India. One wonders why they have not done it earlier.
Today globally Coke and other aerated drinks are being replaced with fresh juices and other healthier options. Can the hollowness of the product stand the health scrutiny of consumer in the desi food accompaniment space Even if it can, how long it will be able to hold on to these newly-acquired spaces is what one wait and watch. Sooner or later the brand has to embrace a healthy product offering. Can hollowness be really replaced by happiness
The writer is former VP, consumer insight, McCann Erickson India. You can contact him on kishore.chakraborti0@gmail.com
