Why khichdi makes for great food porn

Take a close look at the most popular posts on food instagrams, they’re all about the emotional connect, writes Mita KapurI want to live the life of a professional food Instagrammer. It’s my next happy place. I want my life ruled by hashtags: #food, #foodporn, #foodgasm, #foodie, #instafood, #travel, #picoftheday, #foodstagram and it goes on! It’s a thriving sub-culture and apart from that, it’s nurturing the growth of insta-entreprenuers.I follow @New_Fork_City, which has over 487,000 followers and follows just four people. That’s crazy-insane! It’s handled by three youngsters who are barely in college, were just out of high school when they began this account, and are now earning a decent income from it. Their parents have invested money to trademark the name and create a company. A picture of home-made pasta with tomato sauce has over 20,000 likes and another of a simple margherita pizza has almost 27,000 likes.

Food pictures are stylishly done by foodstagrammers, who are being wooed by restaurants to dip into their meta-data to beef up business; this new breed of foodies gets paid, which signals an opening up of new channels of income — just for the love of food! It’s easy to find places to eat according to your mood when you are in a new city, and it’s this group of enterprising calorie- consumers that can turn a vacation into a trip to foodie heaven and back. The hospitality industry can’t ignore the vibrant and far-reaching impact Instagram has on business.

It’s a wild, wild space to be in — for creative photography, for editorial content, and for spawning trends that are monitored closely according to the feed and how it is curated every day. I noticed patterns, niche areas, and vastly popular feeds, and kept going back to a certain type of pictures that I noticed were being liked a little more promptly than others. Evocative images and artsy shots of melting cheese burgers, oozing egg yolks, gooey chocolate brownie doughwiches stuffed with ice cream and fudge sauce drive chunks of crisp, fast-track attention and the numbers climb up.

We are in an era where a picture is central to the entire food experience. Approximately 178 million pictures tagged #food are uploaded every day. It is word-of-mouth marketing in the digital space in all senses.

From the time I started typing this piece to the point of reaching this line, I happened to look at fresh uploads, and guess what got huge hits in less than 15 minutes? A bowl of butter chicken by @foodtalkindia and a picture of Sindhi kadhi, rice, poori, bhaji at a gurudwara by @foodofmumbai.

The more I look at rhythms on Instagram (only food), the more clearly I see the self-evident socio-cultural cartography being mapped out there. I watched Malaika Arora’s feed attract large numbers when it was her own pictures but when she posted a pic of Ways to My Heart: 1) Buy my Food 2) Make me Food 3) Be Food Over 6,500 likes came up in a matter of a few minutes.

A picture of a fancy Lego-themed cake posted by an Indian chef got a host of attention, but when the same chef posted a picture of fresh, green fenugreek leaves being dried and made into paranthas by his mother, his feed went berserk. Tea served in traditional sakora clay cups, mirch kothmir dosas, paneer tikka loaded with veggies, wrapped in a whole wheat roti garnered more favour than a well-plated dish. A grandmother’s recipe of potato bhaji, an overhead shot of butter melting on an Amritsari kulcha or a close up shot of jalebis are vigorously courted on Instagram.

Floyd Cardoz uploaded a picture of homemade Goan pulled pork curry, and soon after of sabudana kichdi and both pictures got truckloads of likes, much more than a beautifully plated dish from Bombay Canteen. Manu Chandra’s post of a dosa canoli, coconut chutney idlis, vada crumble and gun powder was preferred over a flan of onions with white truffle. Saransh Goila’s profile says ‘street food addict, butter chicken specialist’ and his picture of a festival lunch cooked by his mother — dahi bada, aloo sabzi, chole, poori, ras malai — had comments like “this is tripti for the soul.” Vikas Khanna’s tandoori makkai roti got almost 5 lakh likes.

I have come across home chefs saying that they changed over to iPhones just to be on Instagram, “the more likes I got, the more I experimented.” One of them now runs a catering business from home.

I’m using Instagram just for the love of food and I noticed a pattern in my own posts: laal maas being cooked, baked gur mishti doi, wheat and gur halwa, chai by the roadside — a constant going back to the roots. There are parameters for how an Instagram account is picked up by a company or restaurateur to promote its wares, but what is eye-catching is that there is a high emotional quotient which humanizes this platform.

If you try to understand the nature of some of the uploads, there is an inherent need to be emotionally connected to the flavours you have grown up with. The cultural threads echo and string us back to where we came from — tomorrow it may be a simple apple pie or a shahi khichdi. No matter what, base flavours win the day.

(Kapur has edited the food anthology Chillies and Porridge)