The umami of love - Umami & Headwaters - Unconditional Love
umami
uːˈmɑːmi/
noun
noun: umami
- a category of taste in food (besides sweet, sour, salt, and bitter), corresponding to the flavour of glutamates, especially monosodium glutamate.
Origin
Japanese, literally ‘deliciousness’.
Translate umami to
Use over time for: umami
Umami: the taste we love but can't describe | The Japan Times
https://www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2014/07/19/.../umami-taste-love-cant-describe/
Jul 19, 2014 - The word "umami"
is, in many ways, literally a mouthful. First coined in 1909 by
Japanese chemist Kikunae Ikeda, the term translates roughly as
"deliciousn.The umami of love - Mumbai Mirror
https://mumbaimirror.indiatimes.com/opinion/.../the-umami-of-love/.../62656434.cms
The umami of love
From
Pride and Prejudice to Ten Things I Hate About You to a big chunk of
(really good) Mills & Boons in the 1990s to many Hindi films in
which the heroine has sharply said to the hero “Oh you shettup”, popular
versions of the love story feature the idea of two people who hate each
other eventually coming to love each other. There is something about
this takrar before pyaar that’s so umami, we just can’t stop eating it.
When Preeti, 35, a scriptwriter, met PR professional Nishant, 34, she found their meetings started well enough but ended with her getting annoyed with him. “Later, when we got together, he said he would often say brash things or remark about how I was an intellectual, because he liked me and knew regular romantic overtures wouldn’t work with me. I would always feel bad that he was stereotyping me, or misunderstanding what I am really like. I’d make a face, but in my heart I wanted him to be as relaxed and affectionate with me as he seemed to be with other people.”
Much that is tasty about this kind of love story lies in the idea of a sparring between equals and the idea of sexual tension. The desire to best each other in conversation often results in effervescent sparring which exhilarates us. In movie songs it is often depicted as a battle of the sexes and these qawwali muqablas and duets are often a contest between two competing notions of love – one romantic, the other cynical. By arguing so much about whether love exists or not, the players out themselves as trueblue romantics, wanting to be convinced, for they desire romantic love above everything.
There is an element of gender tensions in these romances. The men and women in these stories are often bookish or unconventional, and find the stereotypical, gendered protocols of romance alien or false. They feel somehow outside the norm and so, find themselves acutely vulnerable, undone by love, with no recourse to the usual codes and expectations that more conventional people are comfortable with.
The thing is that a lot of the time people who are watching the romance can feel its chemistry, its electricity and even, quite fondly, its vulnerability. So they are prone to teasing such friends – apparently to annoy them for fun, but sub-consciously to enjoy the frisson and maybe even to help bring it to the surface. Whether in a movie or in real life, it is like watching an oldfashioned mystery where we kind of know the ending.
People who claim these strong antipathies often do a lot to be noticed by the other, to catch the other’s eye even if only by being an irritating speck in it. Eventually it seems they can’t leave each other alone. By arguing with each other, they are often simply enjoying each other’s many bright qualities. At some level they also represent each of our anxieties and hopes about romantic love.
That’s why it’s a double relief, a confirmation of love for all of us, when these romances finally come to confession. Only the lovers are surprised, as when Benedick says to Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?” And the rest of us think, no baba, we knew all along, you protest too much.
When Preeti, 35, a scriptwriter, met PR professional Nishant, 34, she found their meetings started well enough but ended with her getting annoyed with him. “Later, when we got together, he said he would often say brash things or remark about how I was an intellectual, because he liked me and knew regular romantic overtures wouldn’t work with me. I would always feel bad that he was stereotyping me, or misunderstanding what I am really like. I’d make a face, but in my heart I wanted him to be as relaxed and affectionate with me as he seemed to be with other people.”
Much that is tasty about this kind of love story lies in the idea of a sparring between equals and the idea of sexual tension. The desire to best each other in conversation often results in effervescent sparring which exhilarates us. In movie songs it is often depicted as a battle of the sexes and these qawwali muqablas and duets are often a contest between two competing notions of love – one romantic, the other cynical. By arguing so much about whether love exists or not, the players out themselves as trueblue romantics, wanting to be convinced, for they desire romantic love above everything.
There is an element of gender tensions in these romances. The men and women in these stories are often bookish or unconventional, and find the stereotypical, gendered protocols of romance alien or false. They feel somehow outside the norm and so, find themselves acutely vulnerable, undone by love, with no recourse to the usual codes and expectations that more conventional people are comfortable with.
The thing is that a lot of the time people who are watching the romance can feel its chemistry, its electricity and even, quite fondly, its vulnerability. So they are prone to teasing such friends – apparently to annoy them for fun, but sub-consciously to enjoy the frisson and maybe even to help bring it to the surface. Whether in a movie or in real life, it is like watching an oldfashioned mystery where we kind of know the ending.
People who claim these strong antipathies often do a lot to be noticed by the other, to catch the other’s eye even if only by being an irritating speck in it. Eventually it seems they can’t leave each other alone. By arguing with each other, they are often simply enjoying each other’s many bright qualities. At some level they also represent each of our anxieties and hopes about romantic love.
That’s why it’s a double relief, a confirmation of love for all of us, when these romances finally come to confession. Only the lovers are surprised, as when Benedick says to Beatrice in Much Ado About Nothing, “I do love nothing in the world so well as you. Is not that strange?” And the rest of us think, no baba, we knew all along, you protest too much.
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The umami of love Paromita Vohra / Updated: Jan 26, 2018, 00
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