The internet has found a new food crime, and Shashi Tharoor has already delivered the verdict. After a Bengaluru product manager shared a photo of idlis sliced into pizza-like wedges, the Congress MP responded with a viral takedown that left social media in splits.
The man at the centre of the storm is Yash, whose only apparent mistake was treating an idli like a product feature that needed optimisation.
His now-viral photo showed the steamed rice cakes neatly cut into triangular slices and arranged on a plate. While Yash may have been aiming for convenience, many social media users saw something else entirely: an idli that had been subjected to a corporate presentation.
No one, however, seemed more amused by the innovation than Congress MP Shashi Tharoor.
“This is what happens when a software engineer gets into the kitchen and tries to partition the data!” Tharoor wrote on X. “It’s called ‘idli’, not ‘id-slice’. No one eats idlis this way, unless they’re Italian and mistake it for pizza. (But don’t try putting sambar on pizza, ok?)”
See the post:
In a single post, Tharoor managed to drag software engineers, Italians, and experimental foodies into the same conversation.
The internet, naturally, had a field day. Some joked that the idlis had been broken down into “actionable units”. Others suggested Yash was applying product-management principles to breakfast, complete with segmentation, user experience enhancements, and chutney accessibility metrics.
The episode also reinforced Tharoor’s emerging role as social media’s unofficial protector of idli traditions.
Recently, he had responded to another viral food combination that left many South Indians clutching their plates in disbelief: idli with chai. When the pairing surfaced online, Tharoor wasted little time in delivering a firm no. For a man celebrated for his vocabulary, his message on the chai-idli alliance was remarkably straightforward — absolutely not.
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