by Kevin Gaussoin, Editor-in-Chief

You and I have a lot in common with Bakasura. We miss the feeling of being lost and yet driven to some destination. We love a perfect chai. We love comics with tantalizing recipes. We love a good trip across the desert toward the Rare Flavours we crave and their inevitable spicy last bite.  

Official Description:
Perfection is pompous and unrealistic. Mistakes, ugly places, and even letting things burn,

As Rubin and Mo continue their travels and the work on their documentary, a Dhabha cook on a highway to Mumbai provides a delicious look into the depth in simplicity, and how the most mundane thing can turn complex through effort.

Bakasura, now known as “Rubin Baksh” is a Rakshasa from The Mahabharata (not the anthropomorphic tigers from Dungeons & Dragons). In the original tales, Bakasura dines on everything, including people. The Mahabharata was first compiled a couple thousand years ago, so what has Baksh been up to since then? Healing, certainly. His back, famously broken by the hero Bhima, has mostly recovered. His appetites? Well… I guess we’ll find out. 

*SPOILERS*

Rare Flavours began with an appetizer chai, then led us to a spicy stew, then a meat course, and now because of the events in issue three, we find ourselves eating what Americans might refer to as merely gas station bean dip. …Or is it more like lentil soup? Next time we interview the amazing Ram V, I shall have to ask. Or maybe I should get some Indian food delivered? 

As we learned in the hors d’oeuvres issue #1 of Rare Flavours, Baksh has decided that he wants to create a documentary about food and sell it to a streaming company. It seems like this will eventually happen, but it also seems like maybe Mo, the director/cinematographer that Baksh has cooking up his documentary, may not actually become dessert in the end. There’s been an ongoing tiny glimpse at the end of each issue that together slowly lead us to understand that Mo survives, at least until the premiere. 

Rare Flavours #4 is more than just a soup course and clearly we haven’t finished our meals, so where are we now? Bakasura-chasers Dil and Dil were escaped, but how and for how long? This first we’ll find out this issue, the second we can’t know until the end.

Oh! Oh! This issue we finally find out who the heck this “Mansi” is that Baksh has been writing to in the overarching narrative! I thought it was going to be Bhima, but no. This is better. 

This literal soup course may be just a pit stop on our delectable journey. We have two more courses in this volume (I pray to the food gods that this delicious story leads to another volume in the future), so I have to assume that next issue bring us to Mo’s salad days as a director/cinematographer and the issue six finale might deliver some just desserts?

I love the passion for food, culture, humanity, and storytelling Ram V writes and Filipe Andrade so ideally illustrates. I love the voices of each character and the gorgeous art style (I only wish each panel was given the colored pencil treatment the lush covers receive). The story and art go together like peas and carrots, or less Gumpishly, like chai and the perfect biscuit cookie. Each issue has me warming once again to the layers of legendary recipes and mythic drama perfectly folded together that almost certainly will end in a strangely palatable tragedy. Baksh seems to predict or project his own eventual predestined end in Rare Flavours #4, ”By burning it, he saves it. In its destruction lies its grace, its flavour.” Is Baksh talking about the Dhabwala or Ram V?

From soup to nuts, Rare Flavours is devilishly delicious. Ram V and Filipe Andrade continue to cook up a tale worthy of Gaiman or Bourdain.

Rating:
ComicsOnline gives Rare Flavours #4 four out of five deceptively simple roadside diversions.

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