This is for the second time that I am the first to write on a category. I like being pioneer.
My similarities with Inzamam-ul-Haq regarding physique are well known. Or should I say those with David Shephard. That’s for you to decide really. And what is common between all plump men? Their pure passion for food. A lot of us blimps are very eccentric food critics and ’’patrons’’. I am one at least. It is not difficult to impress me with food at all: you don’t have to have be a masterful Chef at all. All you have to do is to be reasonably good and that at something considerably calorie rich; the calories coming in the form of sugar and sweeteners.
The writer took a break to bite into some chocolate before he proceeded furter. Upon his return, he said this:
I found that I’ve written reviews on a lot of subjects that I enjoy writing on or am good at. I enjoyed writing on (and regretted having to write it in the fist place) issues like 9/11 since expressing the emotions of others is something of a speciality of me, I daresay. But I haven’t written anything on food so far, apart from a rather mediocre essay on Café Coffee Day. I therefore present before you a nice, brown piece of.
Chocolate, Chocolate, Chocolate
I was born and brought up in the Amul City itself- the town of Anand, Gujarat. In fact Amul is the short form for Anand Milk Union Limited- something which not many are aware of. So I grew up on Amul’s splendid milk and milk products. So if someone can write on Amul, it has to be me!
You open the wrapper? It makes a cackling noise that continues to resonate in your ears till the wrapper is finally thrown into the dustbin... The bar of chocolate is now finally unrobed in your hand? it has been cut into neat rectangular pieces to ease the breaking of it into convenient sized morsels? it has a dark brown colour... you smell it carefully and you smell milk inside it? white clear milk that comes flowing at you with one sniff at the bar?
You enjoy the feeling for a fleeting moment; the time it takes for you to sink your teeth into it. Your teeth have broken apart a considerable chunk of chocolate. You bite it expecting the bitter-and-sweet addictive flavour of classic chocolate. But what meets your tongue is something very different; it comes at you as a huge surprise and quite pleasantly so.
The bar is sweet all right, but it is the smooth cream-rich sweetness of sweetened milk. It is a taste so much like chocolate yet so different from the normal chocolate! You bite at the chocolate even more, slowly, savour it and try to decipher the signals your buds are sending to you. But it’s like finding what you like about yourself; you say that it’s not possible for you to answer that, or that you like everything about yourself.
You swallow the bite, expecting it to take a good amount of time that it takes to swallow a biggish chunk of classic chocolate. But, Amul chocolate reaches your stomach with a smooth and satisfying flow, leaving a brilliant taste in your mouth yet not the sticky feeling nor the gurgling-voice that you have after eating a lot of chocolate.
And this repeats itself over and over and over again till the bar is finally over and time has come for you to accept the fact that there is no more chocolate left to be eaten. In the melancholy that purist chocoholics experience after finishing their bar, you ponder: how eager are you to eat one more bar? And your stomach answers: ’’Very eager, Sir!’’
It is your stomach that says it could do with more, not the tongue. The tongue is a foolish thing; it will want and want and want. Our stomach is wise: it knows and tells. When you ask, ’’Should I eat?’’ ask it to your stomach, not your tongue, for the stomach knows where to stop. And it is this wise stomach that does not mind more.
There is a reason for that. Amul Chocolate is not the bitter-and-sweet chocolate that has a little bit of an alcoholic flavour in it that triggers something of a hangover; a sort of craving for more. It has milk, a lot of milk in it. And our stomach loves milk. It is the best food that man has ever laid his hands on- best derived food, I mean. It has everything our body needs- and the chocolate has everything our body wants
You wonder whether there is another bar in the refridgerator; you open it and to your delight you do indeed find another one.
You open the wrapper? It makes a cackling noise that continues to resonate in your ears till the wrapper is finally thrown into the dustbin...
The same process shall perpetuate again.
The writer took a further break now to sink his teeth into another bar of Amul chocolate, the diet chart tacked to the ice-box a passive spectator to the debacle that shall most certainly occur in the life of the writer. Upon his return:
The Verdict
With recent controversies regarding packaging of foods, I want to assure you. Amul is a very-very responsible company and will package it’s foods in the exact manner that it should be: It also has stricter norms for re-collecting the stock that is now no more to be sold. Cadbury’s has an impeccable manufacturing technique. The problem is that those companies do not collect the stock once it has crossed the maximum duration for which it remains safe for consumption. Amul is slightly better. It’s hygienic.
I confess I have always looked at this chocolate with a certain bias; I grew up in Amul city and my father has always been a protégé of the father of Amul. So I have not actually been a critic of Amol Chocolate the way I have been of other foods. Yet, with a very careful inspection of the chocolate, I can say just one thing:
Thoda Mooh Meetha Kar Le Yaar!