Field notes
Why we call it Papadom Diaries
A papadom is the crispiest thing on the table and impossible to ignore. So is my dad. Here's the whole story behind the name.
People ask me about the name, so here is the whole of it.
A papadom is the crispiest thing on the Indian table. It arrives before anything else, it is impossible to ignore, and everybody reaches for it. That is the joke, and it is also true. I am everyone's Papa. At home, at work, in the family, I am the one who turns up, says his piece, and cannot really be ignored. Papa, papadom. The name more or less wrote itself.
If I am honest though, the original impossible to ignore Papa was my own dad. He filled a room without trying. He would sit in his chair with the morning paper and put the whole world right before breakfast. I got a lot of things from him, and not being able to keep quiet is clearly one of them.
Then there is the second half, the Diaries, and that part matters just as much to me. A diary is not a highlight reel. It is not the best ten seconds of a trip cut to music. It is the ordinary day written down while it is still fresh: the roadside chai, the price of a corn on the cob, the argument in the traffic, the thing my mum said in the car. I wanted a name that promised the real thing, not the polished thing.
I always wanted to make a proper documentary about India, the kind nobody ever got round to commissioning. No one called, so in the end I picked up my phone and started making it myself, one bite sized piece at a time. Papadom Diaries is what came out.
So that is the name. A crispy snack, a father who could not be ignored, and a promise to keep it honest. Reach in.
More later.