Whose Samosa is it Anyway?

Whose Samosa is it Anyway? by Sonal Ved
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A promising title but the contents were a big disappointment. There is an interminable introduction – a detailed summary (an oxymoron, I know) of the rest of the book. Just a rambling and flippant account of Indian history.

My understanding is that it is safe to assume that, like Bandra West, perhaps the Indus society too was a multi-ethnic society, and the Vedic people were a part of that society, like the foreigners you’ll see savouring moringa smoothies post a yogalates class.

Mainly routine stuff, except for an occasional gem:

…real Balti food is so rare, it can seldom be found outside certain pockets of Ladakh or even on Google fo that matter. Dishes like kisir, buckwheat pancake; tsamik, yoghurt- and herb-based dip; fay mar, roasted barley flour mixed with white butter; ba-leh, local hand-rolled noodles; grangthur, fluffy buckwheat bread; chonmagramgrim, a salad of tomato, apple, walnut, apricots and yak cheese; and phading, a dessert of boiled apricots.

The book could have been more succinct without the numerous repetitions and done with some drastic pruning.

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