The Wonder Years

Hello all.

If you take a good look around you at any given minute of your day, there is bound to be some reminder on hand that we are living in the golden era of the mega-consumer era. If you stop and think about it, the significance can really floor you. I mean, humankind has been striving for thousands upon thousands of years, through heat and cold and malaria and wild animal dodgings and the like, to arrive the species at where it sits today. And what a well-stocked world we live in! Through the wonders of capitalist exploitation and the fashioning of globalized neo-Silk Roads capable of giving the people of Nowhere, USA, the best of South Korea and/or Ghana in 24 hours or less, the handicrafts and foodstuffs of a millennia of human sweat and strife have been layed wide open for the world to consume. From buffalo skins to digital watches to happy meals, the goods of every corner of the globe have been mass produced and mobilized and enabled to reach our doorsteps in a timely and cost-effective manner (granted that you reside in the correct tax bracket). SPOILER: If the sarcasm of the past few sentences was a little too subtle or you're busy Facebook chatting as you casually read this, allow me to put it into no uncertain terms: there are massive and pressing problems with the systems we take for granted, and god willing we will make some much needed changes in the near future. But this post is for humour alone (note the witty insertion of global export Queen's English), so carry on. Right. Now, while the activists and socially conscious nay-sayers amongst us will always be ready to interject with some nonsense about child-labor or equal distribution of wealth, I for one can see an upside to the situation we currently reside in, and this post is to bring light upon it, to illuminate it if you will, which in some cultures/languages means to shed light on a subject and/or idea, which I suppose works just fine in English as well. So forget about any and all issues you may have with the global capitalist order for a moment and consider this: Nutella.

That's right, Nutella. Created in Italy during the Second World War, now exported world-wide, and chock full of hazelnutty goodness, Nutella is quite possibly one of the most amazing food products known to modern man. Rich, creamy, nutty, chocolatey, sweet and yet subtle, Nutella is one of those foods that you eat right before exclaiming "damn" in a loud voice to anyone who will give you an ear to do so. Nutella is divine, a food of the gods, and it's mysteries are hitherto unplundered. It's good on most anything, really. Cookies? Check. Toast? Hell yes. Chocolate bars? You better believe it. And what about on a spoon already covered in peanut butter? Amazing, and just a little bit arousing. I've been eating so much Nutella lately that my teeth hurt just thinking about it, which makes me want to consume more of it. And to think, in India of all places. Until a year or so ago, I was unfamiliar with the taste of this ambrosial delight. Yes, I had seen it on grocery store shelves in the past, or heard of people singing it's praises. But to each their own in their own time, and my time just happened to be in Jaipur, India, about as far away from the main centers of Nutella consumption as one can get. I mean, Europe? Yeah, they're nutty about it, especially in France, Belgium, etc. My peeps in NYC told me about it previously. And I heard it's la bomba in parts of Latin America. But I had a moment, which changed my snack/dessert mindset forever. Here's what happened, in brief:

April and I walked down to Big Shopper in Raja Park, a chain grocery store in our neck of the woods that's the equivalent of Ralph's, Whole Foods, and Central Market rolled into one, and then dropped in India: it's not terribly dirty, they have a decent selection of stuff, and it's over-priced. Anyhow. Peanut butter was on the agenda, a staple food back home that I've been missing like mad here. April had just gotten back from a week in France, and as we passed a lone container of Nutella on a half-barren store shelf, we said to ourselves, "What the hell?", and we went for it, despite the steep price tag: $5 American, a princely sum for any food product in this country. You can purcahse 5 kilograms of wheat flour for less than that, which will make rotis and chapatis for two months for three to four people, and don't get me started on vegetables: we're getting screwed royally by the grocery stores back home, every day of the week. Anyhow, we had a moment of opulence and ability and made the purchase. What the hell, sometimes it's nice.

So we got home, and took out some Hob-Nobs biscuits from the pantry (another amazing product of the globalized world economy: the best British digest-a-biscuits that rupees can buy), and the newly purchased peanut butter and Nutella. It was at this point that I had my first spoonful of the delectable deliciousness of Nutella. I was blown away. Forcing a stream of explicatives from my chocolate and hazel-nut smeared lips, I downed some more. God, it was good. Phenomenal, really, and damned tasty. At some point, I had to stop myself, lest it all be consumed in one sitting. An hour later, I came back for more, and basically have been doing so for the past week. I'm crazy about it. Hence, this blog post.

Now go eat some Nutella, and do your part to support global capitalism. In a bygone era, it was only the Italians who had such privileges. But remember, there's always an upside to every situation, and in this one, the sweet chocolatey fantasticness of Nutella is it.