ANANT & RADHIKA TIE THE KNOT IN HAPPILY EVER AFTER SHAADI… after several months of glamorous events leading up to the final rites of marriage on July 12, 2024 with the full Ambani and Merchant families in attendence along with film celebraties, politicians, religious heads and Prime Minister Narendra Modi came to give the couple his blessings. The three day feasting which accompanied the celebrations were a ‘culinary expedition’ of 2,500 dishes prepared by 500 chefs from around the world… including Goa’s Chef Avinash Martins who presented a Cavatina of fusion Goan vegeterian dishes. It was an all vegeterian culinary feast.
By Tara Narayan\
THE MONSOON season is not the Hindu marriage season but Anant Ambani decided to get married amidst the rain pouring outside in mid-July in 2024. The whole country was invited as viewers or voyeurs to the most extravagant marriage of the century or so some besotted by the Ambani family celebrations say. These days anybody who is anybody is recapping the Ambani shaadi and so must I, don’t ask me why! Reportedly the shaadi of the century cost an astronomical Rs6,000 crore but let’s say Mukesh Ambani has inherited his father Dhirubhai Ambani’s Midas touch.
Clearly some meticulous planning has gone into the long-drawn out marriage of Anant Ambani and Radhika Merchant. It actually all started in 2022 with a visit to the Srinathji temple in Nathdwara in Gujarat and after that the ball started rolling and from the sound of it a most rocking shaddi…it’s been making the rounds on social media, with ga ga print media picking up much of the glamorous affair tidbits to splash on their pages…fairy tale marriage? I don’t know about that, what’s a fairy tale marriage strictly speaking? When a rich man or woman marries a poor man woman, I would say that’s a Cinderella-style fairy tale marriage. Otherwise, it’s just another wealthy people’s marriage in my view and wealthy marriages too have been known to be good, bad or ugly in time as they get older and older. The wealthy of course don’t grow old, all the money they have helps them to stay young as in forever after.
Anyway, after watching too much of the international and national celebrity-studded goings-on of the shaadi, I must confess at times I too wished I could have gone as a ghost or something like that, no, may be a fly or a butterfly to the July 12, 2024 wedding marriage reception at the Jio World Convention Center at Nariman Point in Mumbai (that was Bombay once upon a time).
COULDN’T care less about the fashion parades which turned the humble saree into a bikini saree! The Ambani women though were draped in the most gorgeous sarees traditionally and exquisitely turned out in mesmerizing attire and emeralds, diamonds, pearls jewelry…never mind all that. It’s well covered over the social media sites.
But it must have been fun taking in all the foodie stuff circulating in train circuits. I must say as one of India’s wealthiest woman Nita Ambani lives the most exciting and adventurous life, and she’s stretched herself some coming to the marriage of her youngest son Anant with his long-standing girlfriend Radhika Merchant (daughter of Encore Healthcare owners Shaila and Viren Merchant).
To stay with the food extravaganza part of it I pieced this together courtesy videos circulating of the grand eye-popping, mind-boggling shaadi! It was a pure vegetarian spread of something like 2,500 dishes from around the world, we hear. Nita Ambani went all the way to the world’s oldest city Banaras to shop for sarees and chaat; the entire chaat street of Banaras was re-created on an entire floor of the three-storeyed Jio center for breakfasting, lunching and dining over three days.
Kamia Jani of Curly Tales chats of 20 gates at the venue and the celebrities assigned only Gate No.11…floral and light decorations towered everywhere. At the buffet meals it was Banaras’ Kaashi Chaat Bhandar which was a big hit doing such temptations as tamatar ki chaat, palak patta chaat, tikki chole, etc…a mini-trains service took various desserts around and around for guests to pick up as per their inclination for something meetha ho jaye took over.
Chefs from Indonesia created Indonesian coconut-based dishes, that definitely made my mouth water…and everything else! Nita bhabhi had very sweetly invited all the paparazzi covering the event and their families to join in the fun fair of a wedding and afterwards you could go home with a Banarasi paan churning pleasant aromas in your mouth…leaving you dreaming of the variegated lifestyles of the rich and famous of India and abroad. Do they live in heavenly clouds of various denomination from number catch 22 to constantly upwards if you know what I mean.
Other foodie highlights: There was Peruvian Chef Virgilio Martinez of Lima’s Central (best restaurant of 2023) re-inventing dishes for adventurous vegetarians…think zucchini and asparagus tiradito, purple amaranth avocado emulsion and Peruvian corn, cantaloupe ceviche with burrata cashew roll with mountain chimichurri, fresh cheese date triangles, pistachio tiger’s milk! Also, how about Amazonian cassava texturios in coconut milk, burned cauliflower with strawberry…and more, so much more. Quite a veritable “gastronomic expedition” as one guest said quoted in one of the rave reviews being lapped up by those interested.
And there was our Goan Chef Avinash Martins’ Cavatina: there was tender coconut carpaccio, asparagus and pinenut caldin, wok-tossed edamame , and Brussels sprouts kismur if you please; and pao de quesa, dirty grilled sweet potato and corn gallette and grilled oyster mushrooms. Much more to befuddle the mind! Think something like 500 chefs doing something like … 3,500 dishes (one count), 90 types of food, 60 types of kebab alone…global and Indian cuisines. Somewhere I saw listed Indori mango dal-bhatti-churma, kachori, kopra pattice…hey, 65 types of sweets (mava kachori, shrikhand, ice-creams). Sixty-five types of sweets…mava kachori, shrikhand,ice-creams, etc. Okay, no more! The three days
Hey, don’t for one moment think the rich and famous are not human and humane. In this case I think the entire country was on the guest list to witness the most expensive, high profile and sensational marriage of the century…bless the couple as in jug jug jiyo, even if you think it was a bit of a too much to make sense or nonsense of.
Interestingly, everyone got boxes of mithai to take home including all staff and the cherries on the cake or gateau of a shaadi – they were also giving away at a shopping mall installed at one of the venues where all kinds of desirable branded goodies like watches, sunglasses, etcetera, were being given away for the taking…I guessed I missed out some gala fun in Mumbai that was Bombay!
BOL SANS RIVAL
SOMEBODY called me up to ask me about the price of Goa’s most celebrated cake without rivals, that is Bol Sans Rival…why didn’t mention it here in my last column here! Usually, I mention the prices too. My two-kg bol sans rival from Sugar Flower cost about Rs1,700 but it was delivered me at home in Caranzalem and some of it still lingers in my kitchen fridge freezer if you want to come taste it!
Pricing is more or less the same with most of the fine bakery houses – at the Golden Chantilly they do some awesome stuff and the “dessert experience” list I have with me describes such things as Crème a la Vanille, Mon Cheri, Princess Pistache, Baileys Mascarpone, Chocolat…cocoa hazelnut flour cake covered in a chocolate ganache (Rs2,900). Yes, they do a Bolo Sans Rial (gluten free)…“an ode to Goa showcasing cashew and butter cream (Rs2,600 kg). The select Golden Chantilly offerings are worth checking out!
CHUCK, CHUCK SUGAR!
IF you’re catching the incomparable Dr Eric Berg’s talks on body beautiful from the inside out these days like I am, you’ll understand why all of us must chuck out the industrial processed carb (as in carbohydrate) called refined white sugar (there in almost everything we tend eat in house as also from the marketplace. Every now and again I wake up the evils of sugar as in industrial ingredient. refined white sugar.
And after writing about superlative cakes of Goa her I feel like a bit of a hypocrite here! Although I must tell you I don’t buy sugar anymore, my grandmother put jaggery in her tea and so do I. I keep both jaggery powder (many of them in the market nowadays and even pharmacies keep them, low-sulphur jaggery powder, organically cultivated sugar cane too).
With cancer in every home you must know that cancer feeds on sugar. Listen up I must be a killjoy but we all need to think of industrial ingredients in general and sugar specifically as one of the evils to toss out of life, yes, both as in sugar/starch in our eating habits seriously. According to Dr Eric Berg refined sugar is the one thing which helps kill the factory in each cell of ours called mitochondria …it is over-feasting on the sugary carbs of our industrial age which leads to deterioration of mitochondria (where glucose and oxygen interact to produce energy). If we suffer from muscle loss as we grow old and older it is because of overused and abused mitochondria (muscles are as much as 40% of mitochondria in the body)…hence, in today’s urban rich civilization forever in celebration and feasting mode, we suffer majorly form what is called metabolic diseases – in every home today.
In this sense healthcare is more like death like death-care if it doesn’t educate you in drinking and eating right! Yes, cancer sets in when the cellular factories of body beautifully give up in despair and start dismantling themselves…when you run out of energy all the time you know this is what is happening. You are not eating right and not enough exercise either – the twin pillars of the quality of longevity we all enjoy if we make it into our 60s, 70s, 80s and plus, plus. Just keep that in mind, okay, even bol sans rival only on occasion and not every day or week.
WHICH reminds me to add here that our education powers that be must put real health education on the curriculum of every child in school and student in college – it is as important as yoga! Let them have classes looking and listening to the hundreds of videos put out online of Dr Eric Berg (nobody traces the roots of deficiency and linkages with disease like he does), our own Dr BM Hegde, Dr Deepak Chopra and absolutely my favorite Dr Shiva Ayyadurai, in fact if you’re asking me Dr Shiva Ayyadurai of the runaway successful TruthFreedomHealth movement first (hope he makes it to the hot seat of president in the US of A one of these days).
Between the names I’ve mentioned here and a few more, all engaged in zero-disease movements in the countries of the West today (for example, John and Ocean Robbins of the Food Revolution movement, Brian Vasily and some more) we cannot but realize the importance of switching to more health-friendly, eco-friendly lifestyles for the good of the human race, as also Mother Earth who keeps us all alive. Start today in small ways and move on to big ways if you want to be alive on your 140th birthday!