Of Times When I Was Biased, Of Times When I Found It & Of Times When I Fixed It

We all have to face our issues one day – accept them, solve them or wear them on our sleeves – whatever, just face them. Right? So here I confess mine (actually one of many mine) –

I tend to get biased. May be biased isn’t the exact word, it is a little of one-sided and a little of pre-disposed. And because of my ‘biases,’ I tend to stick to one particular thing and do not give others a chance.

For example, I think Benedict Cumberbatch is the best Sherlock Holmes, so I haven’t even tried to see Jonny Lee Miller’s Elementary. And I think that books are always better than their film/TV adaptations, so I keep toiling through endless pages of A Song of Ice and Fire and not even as take a peek at television’s A Game of Thrones. Did you get my point?

Add to it the fact that my husband suffers from the same thing. Hence, we have made it worse for each other. So this story starts the day we get married. Before getting married, I didn’t have any preferences for instant noodles, any brand will do. After getting married, we somehow kept getting Maggi again and again. Before we know it, Maggi was sitting high on our pantry of bias.

I have been married to 7 years now and for 7 years straight, I have adored Maggi. I have never cared if there is another product in the aisle; I have picked Maggi every single time.

See that’s how I am biased.

Then in June this year, Maggi vanished for good. Initially every brand of instant noodle vanished, but most of them came back. But not Maggi. So here we were – a couple who ate Maggi every weekend was not eating any instant noodle because Maggi was not there. We would rather starve of Maggi than try any other brand.

Meanwhile, I was invited to ITC You Ask We Answer Bloggers Meet and of course I went. The meet was about every brand under ITC Foods, however, was focussed on Sunfeast Yippee instant noodles. So I started building a wall, “I shouldn’t and I wouldn’t hear anything good about anything non-Maggi.” As the presentation progressed, my walls started tumbling down.

ITC Foods team (especially Rajesh V L and Kavita Chaurvedi) was so good. I was surprised that they never even once tried to show Maggi down. They just concentrated on the strong points of their brand without much comparison with any other. That was classy I would say.

But what really worked for me was all that science talk that Rajesh V L shared around. I am a total sucker for science and though I am not that much of a nerd, numbers and scientific concepts persuade me well.

I was sitting there and wondering, “Maggi is good, but that doesn’t mean another instant noodle cannot be good as well.”

Seriously, it was one of that epiphany moments where I was just irritated at myself for being biased, I mean really irritated. I should have tried Yippee before. Why wasn’t I seeing beyond Maggi? It is all about giving somebody else as chance. I should have been more open-minded, I might have been surprised.

And that is when I decided to cook Yippee for our Friday night dinners for at least a few coming weeks. Sincerely trying out Sunfeast Yippee noodles, without any walls or any preconceived notions.

The ITC meet helped me ponder over my other biases as well. I am ready to deal with them, one at a time. After Sunfeast Yippee, next on my list, to see Lucy Liu as Dr Watson. Fingers crossed!

To learn more about the science behind instant noodles, visit – Sunfeast Yippee noodles

To read about the details of the meet, visit – Life As Freya

Glimpses from the evening –