The first time I realized that eating with your hand could provoke feelings of anxiety or disorientation in someone unfamiliar with this habit was when I invited a friend to join my family and me at my graduation dinner celebrated at India’s Restaurant on Essen Lane. Dressed in our commencement finery and with the hours spent in anonymous, ceremonial purgatory behind us, my family and I were ready to bury our faces, and our hands, in an all-you-can-eat Indian buffet.
My friend, worldly enough, didn’t seem to require instruction. He dug in gamely, wrestling a few grains of rice to his mouth while most slipped through his inexpertly positioned fingers. Thankfully, he was right handed, allowing us to avoid having to explain that one only eats with his or her right hand, a politeness left over from an age when the left hand was a precursor to Charmin Ultra Soft—indelicate dinner conversation to say the least. We all had a good-natured laugh at his sloppy attempts; and then we got on with it.
It would serve at this point to explain that I am a first generation Indian American; my father is Tamilian, hailing from the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. He emigrated to Canada to complete his graduate schooling, meeting my mother, a freckled lass of deep Highland Scottish roots, in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Upon their marriage, my mother dutifully learned how to cook Indian food from my grandmother, and at least fifty percent of my meals growing up consisted of Indian food.
While I cannot claim to be such an innocent that I was oblivious to the strangeness of our choice of utensil that afternoon long ago—Indian restaurant or not—I was surprised to find out many months later the degree to which this friend was taken aback when my entire family—with no set-up, intro, warning, or comment—dove hands-first into the food.
It was a stunning realization for me. Granted, my lack of consideration could reveal an absence of thoughtfulness. But considering the intensity of my confusion, I think it more significantly revealed how strongly I assumed that eating Indian food with your hand was normal and that everyone knew it. My default modus operandi went something like: “I understand that you find it strange to eat with your hands—here’s a fork—and don’t mind me as I predictably eat saag paneer with my hand.”
This isn’t to say that I hadn’t noticed that the Raghavans seemed always to be the outliers in these South Asian eateries, even among other Indian Americans. But, I fumed, all those silverwear-wielding posers were turning their backs on their culture. I knew how they all ate at home when the pretense of fine-dining was stripped away. We all put our pants on one leg at a time, and we all slurped our sambar through turmeric-stained fingers.
My father is not a traditionalist; he is a scientist and (usually) a pragmatist. He does not offer daily puja to the gods nor does he sing the ragas he learned as a boy in India. He read The Cat in the Hat to me and my siblings when we were young, not the stories of mischievous, butter-stealing Krishna. What I understood about Indian culture I gleaned from the Bollywood pot-luck nights planned by the small Indian Association in our community, the relentless gift-giving of my silk-and-gold-draped aunts, and my personal foray into classical East Indian dance. However, the one aspect of Indian culture that I did learn about from my father was the food.
Dad learned how to enjoy his food in a culture that admires dimpled elbows and an unrestrained use of ghee. Healthy appetites were not just encouraged, they were required. And as a guest at a meal, I can remember many confusing interactions in which I indicated I was quite full, thanks-so-much-it-was-very-good, but had a second—and third—plateful served to me anyway. One of the few Tamil words I know, learned at the dinner table, is “porum”—enough—which, by the way, had very little effect.
Not only was my father raised in this food-loving context, but his mother was also a very, very fine cook. He explained, “[Your grandmother] was always very meticulous. In terms of her cooking style or her discipline, she was meticulous and she always wanted things to come out very consistent…There’s a kind of perfection associated with every little thing.”
My grandmother’s most important work was cooking, because it was how she cared for and expressed her love for her family. And within the loving bosom of that family, my father—and everyone else in the family—always and only ate with their hands. Sometimes when he was a child, on special occasions his mother would feed him by hand, balling up a mixture of vegetables, rice, and sambar and placing it in his tiny, outstretched hand. My father explained, “We would just sit around her and then she would take a ball of the food and put it in your hand. So she’d put a ball for each one; and then we’d get another round. Like that. I thought that that actually tasted better than if I ate it myself.”
All this to say that, with respect to Indian food, my father is a connoisseur of the highest order, and connoisseurs eat with their hands because, as my father insists, “It just tastes better.” Among other benefits, he would also add that one never has to worry about misplacing a utensil, no one else can use it, you always know where it’s been, and the aroma stays with you for hours after you’ve eaten.
These days, having lived away from home and the coinciding regular schedule of Indian meals for so long, my habits have gone stale. Without the unselfconscious, un-affected cushion of habit and without the supportive buttress of my father at the table, I often just opt for a fork to avoid the discomfort of being different—God forbid.
But, if you ever see a distinguished gentleman at any of Baton Rouge’s Indian restaurants (and Baton Rouge, at last count, has five to enjoy, each with a slightly different approach to cuisine and atmosphere) eschewing his silverwear as he attacks his korma with his right hand, you can be relatively sure it is my father. Perhaps, with him leading the charge, you might even consider following his example.
Surely, in a culture that pinches the tails and sucks the heads of one of the ugliest creatures on God’s green earth, any dinner table pretensions can be set aside for the sake of increased enjoyment.
Details.Details.Details.
Al-Noor Indian Cuisine 15380 George O’Neal Lane Baton Rouge, La. (225) 755-0397 Bay Leaf Indian Cuisine 5160 S. Sherwood Forest Boulevard Baton Rouge, La. (225) 291-4250 • bayleafbr.com Curry N Kabab 11904 Coursey Boulevard Baton Rouge, La. (225) 372-5002 The Himalayas Restaurant 3851 S. Sherwood Forest Boulevard Baton Rouge, La. (225) 295-4490 thehimalayasrestaurant.com India’s Restaurant 5230 Essen Lane Baton Rouge, La. (225) 769-0600
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