This title is deliberately misleading, as I am rarely hungry in India, a country which seems to take nearly as much pride in its cuisine as it does its films. Having finished yet another sumptuous and sleep-inducing lunch at the program center, the topic of food in India is fresh in my mind (and stomach).
While the most common denominator of an Indian meal is without doubt roti (in hindi, bread, of any form) the second most common denominator for myself is certainly the emotion of surprise. While the Indian food I’ve had in restaurants in the US can certainly be delicious it is not representative of the day-to-day diets of many North Indians. Important to consider are the religious characteristics which effect many people’s daily diets. For example, in Delhi, a city with an extremely vast Hindu majority, serving or selling beef is illegal. Additionally, while pork is available, in Muslim-majority areas, like Old Delhi, pork is nearly impossible to find. I’ll give you a typical day of meals as an example (typical for my homestay, I should say):
Breakfast is very light, consisting of toast with butter (thank you England), cornflakes with hot milk (milk is often not pasteurized, so it must be boiled for a solid ten minutes), and chai.
Lunch, at least for us students, is certainly the heaviest meal of the day. I should say that we are incredibly spoiled at the program center, our cook, Kuldeep, is excellent and never bores us. For example, today we had a greek salad, a fruit salad, a light yoghurt sauce, a paneer (cheese) salad dish (mixed with veggies), butter chicken, dal makhni (a creamy brown lentil dish featuring cilantro) and chawal (rice). We are rarely failed by dessert, whether it is fresh mango in vanilla icecream, brownies or jalebi (an intensely sweet, orange, funnel-cake resembling dish).
Dinner generally consists of two dishes, one dal and one sabzi (vegetable) based. The dal is more soupy and eaten with chapati (a type of roti, which is wheat flour based, rolled and quickly fired over a gas range, until it puffs with air). The vegetable dish varies, though is commonly based with aloo (potato) or okra, known as ladies fingers in India (thanks again England). The dishes, while cooked with curry aren’t sauce based, at least for the time being. Weather heavily effects diet currently, as during a 95 degree evening, the last thing one wants to be doing is consuming a heavy cream based curry, let alone think about slaving for 3 hours to prepare said curry.
I mention surprise as a common thread of my experience with food here not as a means to appear overly dramatic or ungrateful, but simply because sometimes, the food is very unexpected. Take for example the breakfast sandwich my host mother prepared this morning. One slice of buttered bread and one spread with a mayo-esque substance surrounding sliced tomato and cucumber sprinkled with salt and pepper, doused in a sweet yet spicy ketchup-like sauce, and then grilled. It appears that the term sandwich has been lost in translation in India, the term “breakfast sandwich” in particular. Of course I finished it (thanks Mom!) and decided that one morning I’d make them all pancakes.
I hope everyone is well and the thought of the weekend is an exciting prospect for all. I’ve written so many words already, so I’ll finish up and end this blog with just one more. The Hindi word for the day: chakahari (vegetarian).
