Every evening, as you pass a scrap metal yard, you notice an old Fiat car standing alone. Day by day, you observe its gradual dismantling: a missing wheel, two more wheels gone, then the doors, seats, and steering wheel. Predictably, the remaining wheel and the entire body disappear, leaving only the bonnet, which vanishes within a week.
At what point does the Fiat cease to be a Fiat? When it has lost its wheels, doors, seats, and steering? Or when only the bonnet remains?
Similarly, consider your desktop computer. As you remove components one by one—the keyboard, trackpad, mouse, OS, and apps—when does it become impossible to call it a computer?
This concept of gradual dismantling applies to various objects, including food. Take Frankenstein Singh’s Dosa Crush restaurant, which has taken the humble South Indian dosa and transformed it into 111 terrifying new variations. By grafting bits and pieces of every cuisine known to man, Dosa Crush raises the question: how many components of a dosa can be subtracted or replaced before it remains a dosa in name only?
Traditionally, a dosa is a crisp and round rolled-up rice flour pancake, often with a savory potato stuffing. But at Dosa Crush, all condiments and spices are fair game. Mayonnaise may marry Schezwan sauce, desi ghee and dhaniya are added liberally, and the dosa is topped with a mountain of grated cheese and poured into an earthenware pot. The result is a far cry from the original dosa, raising the question of whether it can still be called a dosa.
The article concludes by pointing out that even the dosa batter at Dosa Crush is not traditional, as it is made with besan (chickpea flour) and sooji (semolina) instead of rice and urad flour. This raises the question of whether the restaurant’s creations can be considered dosas at all.
The article leaves readers with a thought-provoking puzzle: at what point does an object lose its identity as its components are gradually removed?
