Today we're talking about the tomato, everyone's favourite fruit. Or is it a vegetable. Hmm. Well, a quick search and Wiki tells me exactly what I need to know. Click here to find out.
But I'm going to talk about more than just the Tomato. I'm talking about the most eye-catching spectacle in the movie Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara. Yes, it's La Tomatina, the annual vegetable fight at Bunol, Valencia. The film and the tomatoes edged me to look further into the festival and I got some interesting facts about it!
It is supposed to start with a man climbing a pole, approximately the height of a two storey building, to get a piece of ham (the Spanish are a bit loony, no?). A water cannon is then fired to indicate the start of the festival and then there are no holds barred, except for a few rules put in place to avoid people from getting hurt amidst all the chaos. Every person is supposed to squash the tomatoes before throwing it, making the process messier, and no one is allowed to bring anything that may start a brawl.
After an hour, the water cannon signals the end of the festival and then the streets are cleaned by the water from the river which, along with the acidity of the tomatoes, refurbishes the city. For those feeling queasy about the food wastage, you'll feel much better knowing that the tomatoes are imported from Extremadura, and are of significantly lower quality than those which are eaten. In fact, the tomatoes are grown especially for this purpose.
The festival is supposed to have started in 1940 when the people from the town had hurled tomatoes at the local council members in protest and the trend continued year after year.
So now we know that throwing rotten tomatoes has been in vogue since the 1940s and we can be thankful to Zoya Akhtar for introducing us to such an innovative use of the tomato.
Harshita Kumar
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