Muslim Aid UK recently set a Guinness World
Record for the world’s largest samosa. They made the
153.1 kg samosa at a mosque in East London.
According to Guinness, a dozen volunteers from
the humanitarian charity took 15 hours to create
the samosa. It was made from 100 kg potatoes, 25 kg
onion, 15 kg peas, 44 kg flour, and traditional Indian
spices. That adds up to 184 kg of ingredients for a
153.1 kg samosa. Either my math is wrong or the volunteers
did a little eating while they cooked. If they did,
I wouldn’t hold it against them. It’s virtually impossible
to resist a samosa of that size.
Unfortunately, when I heard about the huge
samosa, it was too late. I didn’t have time to fly to
London to celebrate the world record by helping myself
to the samosa. All I could do was write a letter to
Muslim Aid UK:
Dear Muslim Aid UK,
First let me congratulate you on making the world’s
largest samosa. I heard that you shattered a record previously
held by Bradford College in Bradford, England.
The college made a samosa weighing 110.8 kg in 2012,
which means that you outdid them by 42 kg.
I wish you had invited me to the event, so we could
have set two records simultaneously. You would have
the Guinness record for “world’s largest samosa”’ and
I would have the record for “largest samosa consumed
by a human.”
Perhaps you don’t believe that I could eat a 153.1 kg
samosa. Well, let me tell you, throughout my life, there
has never been a samosa placed in front of me that I
wasn’t able to finish.
I love samosas. A samosa is the world’s most perfect
snack. I feel sorry for all the people in the world—
and there are billions of them—who haven’t yet discovered
the samosa. In your own way, you are helping to
spread the samosa message.
I’m impressed that you didn’t let the world-record
samosa go to waste. You cut it into pieces and gave it to
the Salvation Army, so it could be distributed to homeless
people. I’m not sure how many homeless people
were lucky enough to eat the samosa, but perhaps you
set a world record for “highest number of people saved
from hunger by a single samosa.”
Samosas are a great way to fight hunger. I wish
more charitable organizations would cook samosas to
distribute to homeless people, as well as people like me
who love samosas. Samosas are a great way to show
people that you care about them. That’s what I always
tell my relatives. But have they ever bothered to cook
me a 153 kg samosa? Oh no, not even a 1.53 kg samosa.
Samosas are popular not just in India, but in other
parts of Asia, as well as the Arabian peninsula, the
Horn of Africa, North Africa, and South Africa. In some
countries, a samosa is known by a slightly different
name, such as somosa, sambusa, sambuksa, samsa,
samuza, sambosa, and of course “some more, sir.”
I always thought that samosas originated in India,
but according to Wikipedia, they originated in the Middle
East and were brought to the Indian subcontinent
in the 13th or 14th century by traders from Central Asia.
I’m not sure how samosas made their way to the UK,
but it wouldn’t surprise me to learn that the British East
India Company was behind it.
Congratulations again, Muslim Aid UK! You have
done a great service by cooking the world’s largest samosa,
but I hope you won’t allow another organization
to break your record. Please break it yourself before
someone else does. And this time, please invite me. I
will entertain everyone by performing a magic trick:
making the samosa disappear.
Compiled and partly written by Indian humorist MELVIN DURAI, author of the novel Bala Takes the Plunge.
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