‘Anyone
travelling from UK to Goa? Forget chocolates… bring home onions!’ From comments to sharing
information about cooking Goan dishes sans the onion, social media is full
memes and jokes with the onion in the in the middle. With the price inflation
of the onion hitting every kitchen in Goa, many creative and artistic Goans
have taken to social media to vent out their feelings.
BillytoonsGoa posted, ‘Inspired by Apple, now ONION
logo……uploading!!’ along with an illustration of a bitten onion. Speaking
about the illustration that took him 20 minutes to draw, he says, “In the end,
the common man suffers due to these high prices. What will one eat? The drawing
is how an onion logo can be created compared to an Apple brand logo. As Apple
is the highest brand in phones, now we have the Onion too.” Living in Dubai,
Billy is still sensitive about Goan issues and uses his drawings to share his
opinion. He has previously drawn creative works on issues like coal pollution ,
road safety, demonetisation, coconut tree issue, unemployment, bad tourism, the
formalin, controversy etc.
Daniel F de Souza, a
Konkani and English writer, added his twist to the romantic song, ‘Quando
Quando Quando’ as a longing to his beloved ‘kando’ (onion). He posted ‘Tell me
when will you be a part of my humble egg omelette…tell me ….
Kando…Kando…….kando!’.
Daniel says, “The
onion has reached astronomical figures and it is set deep in our psyche with
this rising price. The poem was a spur of the moment thing as the onion has
been a part of our daily life. Now at Rs 200 a kilogram, the onions have put
everyone on the defensive. The price varies in the market but availability is
still a question. Onions were subconsciously playing on my mind when I realised
that to even make a simple egg omelette, you need onions,” says Daniel.
Taking a cue from
Daniel’s post, writer Cecil Pinto added a few lines to the song and changed the
words. His post reads, ‘Tell me when will you be mine, Tell me kando, kando,
kando, We can share a meal divine, Please don’t make me wait again. When will you
say yes to me, Tell me kando, kando, kando, You mean tastiness to me, Oh my
piyav tell me when. Every moment’s a day, Every day seems a lifetime, Let me
show you the way, To a taste beyond compare.’
He shares his
experience, “I read Daniel’s lines and I thought of completing the song by
changing the lyrics. Onions are basic commodities and now when I go to a
restaurant and order biryani, the waiter comes and asks whether we want onions
and lemon. He wants to check whether we will eat it or it will go to waste. The
onion ‘bhoje’, an evening snack, is missing from restaurants and small stalls.
When I asked them about it, they looked surprised and asked me whether I know
the rates of onions to make onion pakoras.”
For the first time in
the history of Goa, a Goan cartoonist, Dr Smitha Bandare Kamat, was recently
awarded the Cartoonist of the Month by Brkitapbindost, a Turkish international
magazine. Taking a jibe at the remarks by Nirmala Sitharaman about not eating
onions and P Chidambaram questioning whether she eats avocados, she drew two
cartoons on the humble onion. “Lydia Menon, a professor from Damodar College,
rightfully understood my thoughts behind the cartoon I drew on Nirmala
Sitharaman and P Chidambaram. Our policy makers have to be sensitive to the
needs, wants and tribulations of the common men. The former not only have to be
sensitive, moreover, they have to be grounded,” adds Dr Smitha.
Laughter,
quite clearly, is the best medicine to solve most of life’s problems. But while
cartoonists and writers and trying to follow that route, we wonder if this will
bring onion prices down. Till then let’s sing, ‘tell me when will
you be mine, kando, kando, kando
