OF MOUSSE AND MEN

Nov 03, 2008 Features / Columnists, Tony Deyal column

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I was writing something about my love for rice and a Spanglish pun by way of Shakespeare came to mind: “Arroz by any name is just as sweet.”  Gertrude Stein would have said, “Roz is arroz is arroz.”  Hamlet would have soliloquised about the slings and arroz of outrageous fortune, Frank Yerby, could have written about vegetarian members of the Vulpes family, “The Foxes of Arroz”, Sir Walter Scott could have authored the classic “Black Arroz,” and Sinclair Lewis could have dispelled all the stories about rice in his famous book, “Arrozmyth.”
The fact is that in my youth I could never get over my mother’s love for what people of East Indian descent in Trinidad call “sweet rice” or my wife Indranie’s Guyanese family call “kheer” which is what it is called in Nepal, India and Pakistan.
The Chinese call the sticky or glutinous rice “sweet rice” but it is far from what my mother prepared.  Hers was more like what is known as “rice pudding.”  Rice puddings are found all over the world and recipes can vary greatly even in the same country.  Generally boiled or baked, the puddings contain rice, milk, sugar or other sweeteners, spices like cinnamon or ginger, raisins, cherries and other fruit, and in some cultures, eggs. In China, the dish is known as “babao fan” (eight treasure rice pudding), in the Phillipines they make a chocolate variation called “Champorado”, in the Middle East the Arab name is “Moghlie” and of course, in Latin America it is “arroz con leche.”
I was thinking about this as I read a bit of Ayurveda (The Science of Life) in the Monk’s Cookbook from Kuai’s Hindu Monastery.  It was the time of Divali for the Hindu Festival of Lights.  While there is a strong religious significance in the observance of Divali, there is also the practical side.  Divali is also the start of the financial year in India.  It is a period of feasting, fireworks and what in Trinidad we call “feteing.”
The Hindus who had come to the West Indies seemed to have been much more religious or became so after the rough sea voyage over thousands of miles of ocean, and the treatment they received when they arrived.  Many of them, my great aunt among them, were told by the British that there was money growing on trees in the Caribbean and the very generous Brits wanted help.  The Indians would be allowed to keep some of the money. Others were press ganged.
It is perhaps why the sun never set on the British Empire – God would never trust an Englishman in the dark.  But, whatever the history, many Hindus go into a period of fasting before Divali and their diet is strictly vegetarian. It is a very religious event for them – faith before fete, vegetarian food followed by desserts among which is ‘kheer’ or sweet rice.
An interesting incident occurred in Trinidad one Divali many years ago when an Indian company, newly arrived, invited many of the Hindus to a big Divali function.  They were stunned to find that alcohol and meat were being served and that instead of a strict religious atmosphere it was a party.  Some of them never got over it.
Something like when my old friend, Mr. Eniath who, accompanied by his dear wife, went to visit India.  They stopped at a roadside stall and Mr. Eniath saw this black fruit and asked what it was.  The guide told him it was watermelon. Mr. Eniath naively observed, “Watermelon here really different.  In Trinidad, watermelon is red.”  The guide then waved his hands over the fruit and the flies scattered in alarm.
All these stories about people and places, crimes and punishment, led me to wonder about the phrase “just desserts.”  I could not understand how people who did bad things should get their “just desserts.”  I could understand my mother and her sweet rice and Indranie and her ‘kheer,’ but could not fathom the British having just desserts of rice pudding after Clive and the Black Hole of Calcutta or what they did to my poor deluded forebears who came here to reap money and ended up reaping a bitter harvest of cutting cane or digging para grass (Brachiaria mutica).
I am not sure what the Brits told the slaves from Africa so many years before, but they too must have taken the middle passage from desperation to despair.
It turned out that the phrase does not refer to “desserts” as we know them – no chocolate pudding, no crème caramel, no cheesecake and strawberry shortcake.  No siree!  We might give Mother Theresa some but the phrase really should be “just deserts.”
At first I thought it might be the Arizona, Sahara or Atacama type and remembered a scene in a Western movie where a man was stripped and then tied by rawhide cords to stakes set in the parched desert sand.  Honey was thrown on him before his captors abandoned him in the desert for the ants to get him.  Was the honey his just deserts or was it the just desserts of the ants?
However, to prevent unnecessary speculation, the phrase has nothing to do with deserts as we know them.
Bryan Belrad in “Just Desert: Research into Criminal Justice Philosophy” explains, “The concept of just desert is one poorly understood outside of legal circles. The term’s common usage complicates comprehension for outsiders, and, once the term’s true meaning is established, it can be a confusingly complex, and, at times self-contradictory, category of judicial philosophy.
According to Gary Martin of Phrases.org, the phrase ‘just desert’ comes from the 16th Century. A clearer, modernized version would be ‘that which is justly deserved.’ In that respect, the conventional wisdom interpretation of the phrase is not so far off; many believe the phrase refers to a dessert, as in a treat, and therefore is in reference to a just reward for a good deed.
In fact, the term correctly applies to deeds both good and ill, but, from the perspective of the criminal justice discipline, it is most often applied with regards to negative behaviour. It is, after all, seldom the duty of the courts to reward those who have committed honorable or noble acts.”  “Deserts” in this sense means “that which is deserved.”
So what about people who desert?  Do they deserve what they get?  A Judge admonished the prisoner before him, “I cannot conceive of a meaner, more cowardly act than yours of running away from your wife.  Do you realise you are a deserter?”  The unrepentant accused replied, “Judge, if you know that woman as I do, you would never refer to me as a “deserter.”  I am a refugee.”
*Tony Deyal was last seen wondering about his favourite rice, Condoleezza, who Bill Maher said was on every network blaming the Iraq mess on “flawed intelligence.”  Afterwards George W. asked her sharply, “You weren’t talking about me were you?”

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