a salute to indian cuisine

and now i am back from india. i've been back for some days now. arrived 1:35 a.m. sunday morning. kept my family awake, slept for almost 5 hrs, and went to church. it was the best way i could imagine to be introduced back into life in waco - with a worship service. i was happy to be sitting between friends, singing, praying, taking the Lord's supper. my mom, dad, and sister devina left the next day, and i was left alone to process my thoughts.

when people ask me about india, it's sometimes hard to discern what they really want to hear. are they asking to be kind? do they really want to know what it was like? sometimes i get it wrong and about 5 min. into a story i see their eyes glaze over. i try to find some awkward way to end the story: "yeah. that's about it. thanks for asking." sometimes i think i really could talk for hours sharing stories that may mean nothing to anyone except me.

but lately i've been thinking about the food in india. it felt like we were always eating. always at a new restaurant. the few times we had a meal prepared in a home were so appreciated because i knew that soon i would be having to order from a menu. and there's new names to things. i became familiar with what some things meant, and started ordering those things. dals are good - lentils cooked in more ways than you can imagine. aloo - potatoes. i ordered that a lot. i would hope that whatever sauce i ordered with my potatoes was tasty. paneer - it has a tofu-like consistency, but is cottage cheese. this may have been my favorite, but sometimes my stomach didn't like it when i thought about ordering it.

i learned that most people order their entree with either a bread or rice. a lot of times, people in our group would order both and the server would raise his eyebrows: "you want naan? or rice? naan and rice? oh! this is a lot of food..." there are several kinds of bread: rotis, chapatis, and naan. sometimes i preferred the roti because it was thin like a tortilla. especially with a good potato dish. it was like having a burrito back home. but soon i discovered the garlic naan. after that, it was all i ordered. sometimes i just ordered garlic naan with soup and was very happy.

there weren't a whole lot of options for dessert. a lot of ice cream. the worst thing i had, maybe the worst ever in life, was a dessert. i'm not sure what it was called, but it was a small, white ball in a puddle of clear liquid. when i chewed on it, it squeaked between my teeth. felt like a sponge, soaking up the very, very sweet, rose-tasting water it was in. the sponge didn't taste like anything, really. so, it was just like chewing on a sponge for weird tasting sweet water. yuck.


most things were really good, though. especially tea. i rarely drank coffee in india. instead, i would generally order tea with milk. it was best when it was seasoned with cardamon, ginger, etc. one day we went to a festival type place where they made the chai in front of us on coals and served us the drinks in these small clay cups that were so hot you could only hold them on the top and bottom with two fingers. it was the best chai i ever tasted in my life. can't you tell in the picture?

that same day, we ate a feast. sitting on floors and pillows with a small block wood table in front of us. we had huge plates that were continuously being filled with different kinds of great tasting delicacies. so why is it that now, when i see the picture of the meal from that day, my stomach turns?

if you've spoken with me since my return, you know that i've developed quite a relationship with my stomach. my life has been lived in attempting to appease its whims. at first, it wasn't having anything to do with whatever was put before me. it didn't even want the fumes to enter its domain. the smell of any food offended it. if i chose to hang out anyway, it decided to force me to leave by demanding a visit to the bathroom. recently, it's decided that it would like some foods, but not everything. so when i'm eating i have to ask, do you like this? or will you decide to cramp and hurt 30 mins. after i've finished it? even then, sometimes it thinks it wants something only to discover...yikes. not a good idea. i hate to say it, but it's true. i can handle not having to see indian food for a while.

but it's getting better, and i'm hopeful that pretty soon my stomach will be ok and the normal 3x a day visits to the restroom will return - instead of the too frequent visits now. that's a new relationship being established that i will spare you from hearing about. the restroom. eh.

so. that's my salute to indian cuisine and all the consequences of eating in foreign country. while i was there it was not so bad, but the return...i should've just stayed.