Wednesday, April 13, 2005

Kottu is not a Sri Lankan food

In (the about page) of kottu it is mentioned as a Sri Lankan food.
It is probably not.
Not that there is anything wrong with it!
It has become Sri Lankan by default with the explosion of fast food industry in Sri Lanka.
A small number of people who patronized the "Muslim Hotels" ate kottu before 80's.There were only a handful of "hotels" which offered kottu.If some food critic could dig up the history it would be great .(As I can remember Rosie Senanyake opened up a fancy kottu joint in front of US embassy in late 80's.It should have been featured in a sunday newspaper.)

Kottu probably has a sub-continent(outside Sri Lanka) Muslim origin because of "beef Kottu.
Kottu is Sri Lankan as much as Pizza is American.
Thats why kottu is the perfect name for the website.Technlogy taken from outside made your own .A mixer of ideas ,thrown into one .Some of them are leftovers from yesterday.What happens tomorrow morning is anybodies guess!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

how dare you insult Sri Lankan heritage, thou World Bank lackey!

Actually, I was fully bullshitting on that one. I'm not that familiar with the history of Kottu, though someone did tell me it was of Muslim origin. A lot of older people don't seem to remember it at all, and my mom - who grew up here - has never had it.

It is a big jumble of cultures and tastes, and also noisy, cheap and often offensive. I agree that it does make sense for a Sri Lankan aggregator. Mahangu's idea, btw.

Anonymous said...

kottu's origin may not be essentially sri lankan, but its like symbolically sri lanklan in a weird way. obviously, most of what we consider 'our's' is probably not right? hoppers, even some of the traditional avurudhu sweets. but kottu. its such a part of our culture now, especially for young people. life without it, would be unimaginable. its as sri lankan as clubbing is, or drinking is. the initial birth might not have taken place here, but its an inevitable part of modern sri lankan culture.

i think kottu is a perfect name for the website that syndicates all (or most) of the sri lankan blogs, because its about being a young sri lankan, as much as its about being sri lankan.