The Ignoramus On Instagram

“Oh dear! I have forgotten to soak the urad dal again! It’s going to be another day of instant idli for breakfast”, I knew that Idlis and Instagram did not mix and my constant obsession over Instagram had led to this not- so-minor household incident which would draw howls of protest from the spouse and the offspring. They hated the ‘instant’ bits which had crept into life. Instant breakfast and meal mixes, instant noodles and quick fixes, instant loans of all kinds and the instant gratification brought about by posting a picture of everyday food on the internet, cunningly styled with an old tea-towel and a sprig of flowers and termed ‘vintage, home-made and slow cooked’. More often than not, I strongly suspected that the food in question had been ordered from the restaurant at the corner and passed off as their own by the denizens who formed the ‘kitty and cooking club’ in our housing society.

Pompously named ‘Sundar Bharat’, the complex boasted four buildings named after the four metros, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai. There were rumors that Ekta developers who had built the complex had recently bought the adjacent plot of land and Bharat would soon be home to Bangalore and Hyderabad as well. It was lucky that the residents were not sorted according to their home states. And many people were left rather confused when they stepped into the lift in Kolkata only to be greeted by several people arguing volubly in Gujarati. The complex lived up to its name though, most of the denizens got along well, all festivals were celebrated with gusto and a general spirit of bonhomie prevailed most of the times.

I normally thanked my stars ten times a day to be living in such a place. It could only be described as a haven by someone like me, who had migrated here from Mysore after marriage. My small- town sensibilities had been overwhelmed in the early days, but now after eighteen years, I liked to think that I was handling Mumbai life like a pro. From haggling with the fisher-woman to handling the raddiwala with his crooked teeth and even more crooked weighing scale to nipping on and off the local trains, bawling toddler in tow, I had done it all. But, old feelings, like old habits die hard. Whenever I was confronted with something new, I could not but help feel a little blue. Change did not come that well to me and I just HAD to put my foot in it a couple of times, before embracing it wholeheartedly. This was especially true when it came to any form of technology. We were oil and water, technology and I. We did not mix.

Technology was my Nemesis. A fact which was bandied about with much relish in the family. It brought a rueful shake of the head and a wry smile on the spouse’s lips. The offspring offered a deep eyeroll or the know-it-all smirk. In fact, the smirk which I saw on her lips when I had just finished a complex piece of copy-pasting and uploading after much sweating and swearing made me want to wipe it off with a well- placed smack on the head, but the fact that she was seventeen and much taller than me, made me think ten times before putting any silly plans into ill warranted action.

I was the queen of the email and the SMS. I handled WhatsApp and Facebook with the ease of an old pro, but alas, every time I finally conquered a bit of tech, the good folks of that far away haven, the inviting and infamous Silicon Valley made sure to come up with something touted to be even newer and faster and of course better. I felt like a mountaineer who had hoisted herself gasping and sweating up the sheer face of an impossibly tall peak hoping to find herself on at least the shoulder of the mountain, only to find herself nestled at its knee, with a long trudge looming ahead.

It did not help that my mother was better at technology than I was. She was much more comfortable chatting to my daughter about ‘pinging’ the necessary people, ‘DM’ing them (it took me a while to even learn the lingo. I thought DM meant Deputy Manager for ages), and bandying words like scanning documents and sending PDFs and JPEGs. Her status was updated regularly. Mine had been the same since the advent of WhatsApp.

The latest blots on my horizon were ‘Insta’ and ‘Snap’. They made me long to instantly snap at people, especially the ladies of my cooking club, who had formed a group on Instagram. ‘Sassy Serves’, they called it. In the good old days, we had gathered at each other’s houses once every two weeks and sampled the offering of whoever happened to be hosting. But the pandemic had put a spanner in our well-oiled works. Now, we were only allowed to virtually slurp at everything yummy from the safe confines of our homes. In the early days of the pandemic, it had been a WhatsApp group with a Zoom meeting to stay connected, but of late, Lata who just had to muscle her way into everything and become king or should we say queen-pin of the whole operation (and who was a tech-whiz, by the way) had discovered the joys of filters and open groups provided by Instagram. Needless to say, the whole group had ‘Instantly’ upgraded. My feeble protests about the lockdown being lifted so that we could now actually meet face-to-face had died an untimely death in the knell of the “Dahling! It’s the new normal!” which all the good ladies had trilled in unison. Sheer laziness I called it.

I jabbed a few buttons listlessly now and then, but to no avail. I only succeeded in ‘liking’ the offerings of others through the offspring’s account, a fact she was not amused by. “You will embarrass me! I have two hundred followers and now, thanks to you, they think I am a member of the ‘Aunty Cooking Club’. How uncool is that!”. I think it was this imminent threat of appearing ‘uncool’ that she took the time to start me off on my own Instagram journey, armed with an account which went by the ‘hip’ name of ‘Gourmet Goddess’. I cooked biryani for her immediately. That was how it was, quid pro quo. She had also thrown in a picture of my grandmother’s old brass spice holder in the starter kit of my first Instagram story. I could hardly believe the picture when I saw it. “In your face, Lata!” was how I described my day.

A couple of days passed in a happy haze. Since I had begun to follow the ‘Sassy Severs’, they followed me right back. As a group and as individuals. By the end of a few eventful days, I had garnered sixty followers, thanks to my spicy Granny or rather my Granny’s spice box. But euphoria was soon followed by gloom. I had an account no doubt, but was yet to master the art of clicking, filtering and posting the pictures of my culinary capers. The offspring had been very clear about  it in  the ‘post or get lost’ part of her lecture. “You have to post regularly if you want to be popular, or people will unfollow you quickly”, she had said ominously. But that had not been the end of it. “Keep it simple until you get the proper hang of it. Remember, a picture is worth a thousand words. DO NOT post anything which will make me regret letting you near Insta!”.

A couple of weeks passed in the happy haze of posting regular pictures. The crème brulee garnered quite a few likes as did the modaks and rabri. My salad bowl looked delectable as did the rava dosa and Mysore bondas.  Gourmet Goddess had been quick off the mark. But soon, I was chafing at my pedestrian postings, especially because Lata had upped the ante. She was posting collages of five course meals with quirky captions and head shots of herself. I was sure people drooled more over her perfectly coiffed hair and beautifully manicured nails as much as they did over her culinary offerings. I began to pester the offspring to teach me to make collages and she did, if only to get me off her back. “I think you have got the basics, but remember the golden rule, LOOK BEFORE YOU POST”, she said, before turning away firmly and shutting herself up with her books. Her exams were approaching.

It was this sudden frenzy of collage making which made me forget the urad dal soaking and the curd setting and several other things besides. The spouse and the offspring braced themselves for a spell of turbulent weather because they knew that I would not rest until I got the collage bug out of my system.

It was a wonderful morning. My recipe for oats dosa paired with a delectably hot red chili chutney had turned out perfectly. All that remained was the collage. I picked out a generic picture of pouty lips painted fire engine red and took a few quick pics of the blood-red chutney in a bone white ceramic bowl. A couple of red chilies alongside, the dosa on a matching plate, all arranged on a bamboo table mat and voila! I was done. The filter made everything look like the offerings from a Michelin starred restaurant. I wrote out a caption. “Red hot and spicy! Chili chutney and oats dosa. The Gourmet Goddess offers spice and health!”. I made what I thought was my best collage yet.

I was soaring high as I posted it. Putting the phone away, I made up my mind to be become a cleansed person, no longer seeking ‘instagratification’ on Instagram. And I resolved not to touch my phone until evening. The first inkling of disaster came when the offspring actually called in the middle of the day to ask if I had taken leave of my senses. Never a good sign. “Check your Instagram account, and delete it immediately”, she said in sepulchral tones.

With trembling fingers, I opened my page to admire my handiwork. My collage, my proud creation which I had posted instantly looked back at me. The edges of the caption and the most important picture of all of the food had been cropped off as the offspring had warned. It now read, “Red, Hot and Spicy! The Gourmet Goddess offers Spice”, accompanied by a pair of pouty lips painted fire engine red.

And thus ended the brief romance of the ignoramus with Instagram. Ignonimously!