Curd cultures and whey-ty wisdom A protection we cannot a ord to lose

BY MELISSA DOMINGO RAWAT

It was way past midnight. As if losing my grandmother wasn’t enough, my son was having another asthma exacerbation –I needed to stay up late into the night to administer his medication. Of course, this was alongside the regular daily grind. My finger lazily scrolled through social media to kill time. That’s when I saw it - someone urgently asking for a culture of Indian curds. Then there were others asking what I had asked myself many times, “Why is the Australian yogurt (or curds) just not the same as the humble homemade curds of India?”

Australia boasts of countless varied, beautiful cultures, except for the culture which would probably make me happiest - a culture of curds from India.

Baazaar

DIRECTOR: Gauravv K. Chawla

STARRING: Saif Ali Khan, Rohan Mehra, Radhika Apte, Chitrangda Singh HHHHH

My sleepy eyes widened, maybe some wise souls knew the answer? Or better still, maybe someone had legally brought Indian dairy into good ol’ Oz? But even as I wondered this, my mind wandered to the fond faces of the immigration personnel who keep Australia’s borders safe. I wrote spontaneously in the Comments section, “If immigration catches you bringing curd into Australia, they’ll turn you into Lassi (a sweet, churned, yogurt-based beverage)”. I actually LOL’d at my own comment for its sheer stupidity - made funnier by the truth of knowing the strict rules around Australian borders. That innocent little laugh somehow lifted my mood as my day drew to a close.

I can’t recall a single notable (or even non-notable) Indian lm based on the plunging dips and giddying highs of the stock market. Do you remember Harshad Mehta? How could you forget the podgy stockbroker who made thousands of Indians rich overnight and then it all ended in a nancial mess in no time at all?

Machiavellian stockbroker is everything that Harshad Mehta would have wanted to be. This is Saif’s most gloriously written and performed part, meaty witty and wicked. He chews into it exposing a sacred hunger that I didn’t notice in his last over-hyped outing.

Saif as Shakun is a true-blue Gujju who won’t let neo-af uence corrupt his cultural integrity. He slips into Gujjucations with the unrehearsed cuteness of tycoon, who has long ceased to be cute to everyone, including his own wife and children.