Chapter 20

Exhibit F(OOD)

The pandemic, for all its ills, was a catalyst to the origin stories of millions of home chefs around the world.

You might recall the sourdough mania, the banana bread revolution, the homemade pizza extravaganza, focaccia gardens in every colour palette or even just the simple bliss of someone else’s ghar ka khana. We feasted through our eyes and newsfeeds for most of 2020 and 2021. Social media became a carousel for the best home food in the world, and it led many people to finding their genuine calling in life.

Even for me, I had to join the fun while our two restaurants were temporarily shut down. I remember posting on Instagram and on my whatsapp group that I was making sushi one weekend. In the next hour I had 56 orders for it! When they said “roll with it”, they weren’t kidding. In those days it wasn’t a bad way to spend 48 hours.

Now imagine a scenario where there is no social media and no whatsapp groups (AKA the 90s). Imagine you’re making cakes (or belly button rings or hair clips for men or ugly shirts to gift to people you don’t like). How would you market your wares?

I’ll save you some time here and spill the beans - you had to jump on the ‘exhibition’ bandwagon.

By that I don’t mean you go to an art exhibition just to stare at the walls wondering if the ‘art’ is the wall or the frame or the painting (or to ask when the wine is being served, which is the real reason you’re there).

No, by exhibition, I mean an organized event on a particular day (or days) where you could rent a space the size of your husband’s cupboard and pretend that was your temporary home of business. I’ll pause here for all my women readers to laugh out loud while picturing the size of their husbands’ closet space.  

Admittedly these events were a great source of ‘word of mouth’ because, if you were an entrepreneur starting a small business of any kind from your home, it was the perfect platform to make people aware of your product.

Generally hosted by groups of enterprising ladies, these events were some of the most sought after privileges for home entrepreneurs in the 90’s (even more than babycorn or mushrooms).  

If you knew a lady who knew a lady who knew a lady on one of those forums, you would stalk her for weeks till she agreed to set up an intro to the final lady (via the middlewoman lady). And so I did the same. A lot of stalking. By the end of said stalking, I knew the names of her kids, her grandkids and much more.

Hey, don’t judge me. You gotta do what you gotta do.

In the 90’s, I was mid-way to becoming a home entrepreneur via my brownies, cookies and a few other goodies. Before that I was busy selling two-wheelers for the family business, so I’ve definitely had a totally normal and conventional career trajectory.

The few friends who would order my desserts encouraged me to get the word out through the exhibition route. Thus began the ‘widening my reach’ chapter of my career (the equivalent of a Whatsapp broadcast or an Instagram story today). I soon started setting up stalls at these events.

Ten days before the date of each event, my house would look like a warehouse, littered with boxes, packing material, bags, tables tops, couches, and a husband and two kids. If the family wanted to find place to sit somewhere, they had to do so at their own risk. If they were poked with a paper clip or stuck to a packing tape or found themselves packed into a carton by mistake, I didn’t want to know about it. If the kids were hungry and wanted food, that was their problem.

Two days before the event, the kitchen was closed for all normal activities (like cooking food for my family). Cupcake trays were lined up like an assembly line. Muffins were baked by the hundreds. Mini-hills of chocolate were chopped and melted into hot pools. Countless baking tins were lined with parchment paper.

Our dining table became industrialized by scores of cooling racks for all the warm goodies. This went on non-stop for two days with very little break in between. The delivery guy from the neighbourhood grocery store came close to being adopted into the family by virtue of how often he was at our doorstep.

Simultaneously, boxes were filled with all the baked goodies and lined up in the middle of the dining room (where no dining was allowed). Soon the room looked like an architect’s delight, with the piles of boxes resembling unique buildings with structures jutting out from every corner.

This was the scene before every exhibition event that I participated in. My sister-in-law, who previously loved the fact that we lived in the same building, started ruing the day she moved into my building. She was (made to be) always present and was recruited (coerced) to help at every stage of this crazy process.

My first experience at one of these events was an eye opener.

I remember women thronging every aisle, every stall, every inch of the place. I remember my wares being doled out at a pace faster than Dhoni’s helicopter shots. Cupcake boxes were snatched from our hands even before we could close them. My main hero, the brownie, disappeared from the racks by 4 pm. We still had 3 more hours to go! It was an adrenalin rush like no other. Not even when I finished my first half marathon had I felt a buzz like this. At least in this case I still had sensation in my limbs (until I had to repeat the same scenario the next day).

The challenge with these exhibitions every year was to figure out new ways to enthrall the promiscuous hordes of attendees, whose attention was always stretched in a million different directions. I remember one year I was hawking bottles of condiments, relishes and marinades at my stall - think items like Chilli Jam, Satay Sauce, and Tapenade. My daughter came up with the idea to make little recipe books to sell along with each product.

We spent weeks testing, typing, photographing, and compiling a series of simple recipes that would bring each of the condiments to life. Now when customers flocked to our stall and examined each offering, instead of asking “What can I do with it”, they just flipped through the book instead. Before we knew it, the books were selling faster than the spreads! Coupled with free samples (courtesy of an idea from my “marketing strategist” son), people began spending a suspiciously long portion of their lunch hours at my stall. The only blight on my day was overhearing a lady tell her friend after tasting my chilli jam, “chhundo chhe”. Can’t win them all, I guess.

I still have at least half-a-carton’s worth of those recipe booklets with me (because I guess we were a little too enthusiastic with our print order :)). To this day, they remind me of the hard work that went into making them and the satisfaction I got from seeing them in people’s hands. On reflection, they were also the perfect practice for the work I’m doing now to author my first ever cookbook.

I remember another event I took part in was in the middle of April at a small venue in South Mumbai. This time, along with my usual cookies and brownies, I decided to add some salad dressings to the menu, since it was sweltering hot and “people eat salads in the summer” and all that jazz.

I managed to source some cute salad dressing bottles with cork lids, and decorated them with even cuter printed stickers. Moroccan Dressing, Coriander Peanut Dressing and Italian Dressing. My family and friends were deployed two days in advance to commence ‘sticking the stickers’ on 450 bottles of dressing.

On the day of the event, we loaded up and set up shop at the venue. I had a prime corner spot next to the window (which proved very useful, as you’ll soon find out). We put up colourful banners and covered the ugly wooden tables with sarongs that I took from home (because all the ‘beautiful’ table cloths at home were targets for drool or spit from our two-year old).

We soon realized that when they said they expected a footfall of 500, they meant of the people passing by outside on the footpath. No one was coming in. Not that day anyway. Kids, this is what life was like in the days before social media.

To compound things, there was no Netflix, no Hotstar etc to entertain us when we got stuck at a dead end event. All we did in that time was stare outside at the people and cars passing by.

You had no option but to become best pals with your companions in the neighbouring stalls.  The lady in our next stall was selling granola bars. She gave me her bars to eat and I told her she was welcome to drink any dressing she wanted. By 4 pm we decided to pack up because the zipping cars and walking humans had lost their charm. Cartons, boxes, and crates were lined up ready to be packed again. Why did we bother emptying them in the first place?

Suddenly in the eerie silence of the room, we heard a loud popping sound. We looked around but couldn’t pin-point the source. After another couple of minutes we heard the same sounds, this time in quick succession. My sister-in-law went to the window thinking a car had backfired. Then I noticed a few cork caps of the dressing bottles strewn about the table and some on the floor. About to yell at my kids for dropping the bottles, I was puzzled to see that the bottles were still on the shelves but the caps had disappeared. I exchanged confused looks with my stall-mates. That soon changed to disbelief followed by peals of laughter when we realized what had happened.

The combination of yoghurt and chickpeas in the Middle-Eastern Dressing had fermented the mixture and, because of the pressure that built up in the bottles, pop they went!

The bottles that were displayed on the shelves decided they were as bored as us and it was time to show their displeasure.

For the next hour we cleaned the spilled dressing from the shelves and scrambled to hunt for the caps which were all over the floor. At least we had found something to do! My new ‘granola bar’ friend was last seen picking out the cork caps from her baskets.  

The day ended on a hilarious note. So what if we didn’t sell anything, at least we had some funny stories and happy neighbours 😊

Why cry over spilled milk when you can laugh over spilled dressing :)