Revolution can be a dinner party

Uncle Mao, in his revealing 1927 essay, 'Report on an Investigation of the Peasant Movement in Hunan', had wryly observed, 'Revolution is not a dinner party.' What he meant was that revolution isn't a genteel social calendar event where participants ask the bowl of minestrone to be passed around. Grabbing it is usually de rigueur. For us following the latest version of the Siege of the Versailles - or, if you're more into current affairs, the Storming of the Capitol - protesters in Dhaka ransacking the presidential 'palace-museum' of Queen Sheikh Hasina, however, have updated Uncle Mao's dated aphorism. While ransacking the place - ironically called 'Gonobhobon', or People's Building - in the asset-stripping style of Black Friday shoppers in the US, and picking up lovely freebies like a Dior suitcase and jamdani dhakai silk saris, goodies plucked also included fish, duck and chicken. For, cuisine, for both Bangladeshi aristocracy and Dhakai hoi pulao, is culinarily revolutionary.

But whether democracy duck or anarchic aloo bharta is served in the forthcoming months, the fact that many had the foresight to break into the Hasina household kitchen to savour biryani shows taste. They wouldn't have found any irony if Begum Antoinette had told them to have cake, instead of bread. Although they would have preferred Natore's famous kachagolla.