Ready-to-eat meals, picked off the shelf, dropped in a tumbler of boiling water or in the heated confines of a microwave oven and put straight on to the dinner plate. That?s the lifeline for a large segment of the city today.

On the racks for the past year or so, brands like Kohinoor, MTR and ITC Kitchens of India are feeding rumbling tummies of working couples and those single in the city marooned in concrete jungles without effective kitchen support.

Apart from frozen, chopped vegetables from Everfresh and other brands, combo packs like rice and Rajma, rice and Dal Makhani, or standalone dishes like Palak Paneer, Matar Paneer, Navratan Korma, Pindi Chana, Pav Bhaji and even frozen parathas are filling the gap between gruelling work schedules and quick-fix meals.

Costing Rs 35 to Rs 40 a pack, sufficient for two, the packaged varieties come in particularly handy when the last takeaway has closed down.

Says 30-something Sonali Mukherjee, spotted stocking up on the week?s shopping at C3, City Centre: ?Most of these products have a distinctive synthetic taste, which is not quite palatable on a day-to-day basis. But these do serve as emergency ration when you reach home in the dead of night, too tired to spend another hour in the kitchen.?

Veterans to the taste advise a little garnishing with flavoured spices and herbs to counter the rather medicinal taste.

Most of the brand spokespersons refute allegations of a taste variation in the products from that of freshly-cooked food.

They also claim that no preservatives are added, the food packs are ?100 per cent natural? and they have garnered a ?phenomenal response? so far.

Charnock City director Mandira Mukherjee, however, feels the products are still in an ?experimental stage? and a ?purchase pattern is yet to emerge?. She concedes there is ?hell-and-heaven difference in the taste of what you get abroad in this section and what you get here?.

The ?curiosity factor?, according to Mukherjee, works better than ?brand loyalty?, as of now. ?People just pick up the packs at random to try different tastes.?

MTR distributor in Calcutta Shantanu Gupta says: ?Most Indians can?t fathom that food (especially the gravy kind) can be fresh, inside a sealed pack for eight months to a year.?

This, despite the food being subjected to a sterilisation process where the temperature is raised to an extremely high level in a retort machine, which kills all the micro-organisms.

The food is vacuum-packed immediately thereafter. ?In the absence of air, there is no chance of the food getting spoilt,? stresses Gupta.