One man's meat is another's venom.

Axone (Akhuni, Hindi/English; 2019)
Netflix

It is a question of one man's meat being another's poison, just like the King of Fruits, Durian, being compared to putrefying and decaying cheese by visiting Europeans. Closer to home, a regular feature of Wednesday nights around the vicinity of the Taman Connaught Pasar Malam (night market) used to be, before the Covid-19 lockdown, the pungent and fermented, almost nausea-inducing stench of stinky tofu. At least that was what I was told, and there is always a long queue at the stall. The secret of the dish, it seems, was that the smellier it smelled, the tastier it tasted!

In the early days of the night market, it was a common sight to see passersby discreetly covering their noses as they passed it by. Over the years, however, the odour has become a trademark of Wednesday nights giving a sort of a nostalgic feel to it.

Many Malaysian students have had similar experiences with cooking belacan (shrimp paste), frying anchovies or preparing bak kut teh soup overseas. One flatmate thought somebody had released a stink bomb when I was heating up Malaysian anchovy sauce (sambal ikan bilis).

Back during childhood days in RRF, living in multi-storeyed low-cost flats, we were exposed to a potpourri of flavours and scents, both pleasant and offensive. The close proximity of occupants enabled us to understand and respect each other's culture.

Using the idea of a group of friends preparing a traditional dish, the story writers decide to highlight the discrimination of people from the North-East regions of India by the rest of India. 

A group of 20-something friends, all from the North-East of India (and one from Nepal) try to surprise one of their friends who was getting married by preparing a unique cuisine of Nagaland, akhuni. The problem is that the smell emitted by the brewing soup gives such a strong smell that leaves such an impression on the neighbourhood. They must have had some previous bad experience before; hence they devised an elaborate plan to trick the strict landlady and hoodwink the other tenants. With the help of the landlady's son, who is on their side (he just wants a part-time North-Eastern lover), they have to dodge embarrassing questions and frequent change of plans. 

The first problem was getting pork meat. 'Decent' people from the Indian sub-continent look at pigs with disdain. Hence, they have to go underground to obtain their merchandise. The running around and looking for a spot to cook provided a hilarious display of comedy and the bigoted views of the majority against the 'others'.

So much for the solidarity in the name of Brotherhood.

We are all guilty of making preset judgments on people just based on their external appearances. It is not necessarily a wrong thing. Over the generations, living in communities, we have developed a defence mechanism to safeguard what is ours for a rainy day against others. We learnt to sniff out our enemies. Anyone not practising our same culture was probably up to no good. Dominance over the 'other' is one sure way to keep them under check. The leaders also decided to emphasise that the 'other's lifestyle was wayward. 

The second wave of the Covid-19 transmission just re-inforced this belief. If initially, the affluent were guilty of bringing in the virus via their high flying habits, now people look at foreign workers in this country has harbingers of all diseases. Of course, they will be involved in clusters of spread. The deplorable housing facilities that you set up (or did not) make social distancing impossible. In some houses, a single bed in share by two - one who finished his morning duty, and later by the one after night duty. Doing lockdown, with no work, all of them had to be cooped together, putting them at high risk of acquiring the virus.

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