As a keen observer of popular culture — and more pertinently, the myriad superfood trends that emerge from there with alarming ferocity — I’ve always found the whole appropriation bid both amusing and sad.
Amusing, because we always seem to need such ostensibly “new age Western fads” to take us back to our intrinsic traditional knowledge. Sad, because of our rather desperate desire to have something we’ve known all along validated, repackaged and then, ultimately shoved down our gullible throats!
It first happened with yoga by way of the Western boomer generation of the 70s. Now, millennials and Gen Z seem to have a whole other social media-fuelled agenda of their own — this time, to reintroduce us to our very own ashwagandha and haldi doodh. (The latter bearing hip, new names of ‘golden latte’ and even ‘moon brew’, if you may.) But there’s another such superfood that’s slowly inching forward. Never mind the fact that it has existed in our midst for millennia. 9,000 years, to be precise. And that’s hemp. Known to you and me as bhang.
