Fingering with Food Etiquette

When was the last time you ate a simple home-cooked meal with your hands, relishing every bite, smacking your fingertips, and felt curiously satiated? The great Indian spoon-and-fork seems to have lost its utilitarian value, thanks to the eternal quest of what can only be called, a “different” lifestyle. Most of us drop aspects of our culture when we set foot in another continent, and take to, what we believe is, the more sophisticated “other” living. And be it something as trivial as food habits, for instance -- we seem to feel humiliated when seen eating with our hands. Of course, there isn’t essentially any section of our society that could be excluded from this doing. A globetrotting desi sitting pretty in his exquisite business class suite could well be as uncomfortable as someone in the economy class, in his painstaking efforts at slicing up his “masala dosa” with the dulled edges of a disposable knife, and savoring it.

Of course, there are exceptions, and we can’t even claim rights to their origin. Finger foods have come to belong to a category of exotic fare that is meant to sound elegant, and classy. And the only time we’d consider indulging in them is when the situation doesn’t have anything to do with us. The Deep Southern cuisine, for example, is considered “special,” and necessitates the use of hands in a “different” way, one that we deem stylish. And sometimes, eating appetizers right out of your hands at cocktail doodads is considered a pardonable sin. But at desi parties, one might yet see people cutting up their samosas with “plastic” silverware, and wonder how much of the samosa actually reaches their mouths. These forks and knives also dig into rotis with such exertion that it takes all the pleasure out of relishing rotis in the first place.

Winters, as I’ve known them, are perfect for family dinners and snack times, with everyone huddled around a cozy fire, and enjoying finger-licking platters of hot, spicy food. Of course, when the term ‘family’ ceases to include a bunch of nears and dears, and all one can possibly do is eat at quaint little chaat shops, the offerings there are far from being homely. When I see these eateries serving appetizing “pani puris” and “sev puris” on sleek little disposable plates, complete with dainty forks and knives, I’m instantly taken back to the roadside joints back at home, where “churmuris” and “mango bhels” were served in newspaper cones that served as perfectly functional containers, and were most delectable when eaten with one’s hands. I might add here that it is virtually impossible to eat “pani puris” out of hollow plastic spoons, although, if one did try, one might end up treating one’s shirt to a lot of the “pani” and one’s chin to some of the “puri.”

Isn’t it rather curious how we bend and twist and even unlearn things just to be able to fit ourselves into the mold of the acceptable “other” living? We relinquish life’s simple pleasures for a dream we seem to be chasing, which may not even get any more real than surreal for some of us. At times, we even choose to starve in order to appear comely. We do anything in our mortal power to avoid being screened out like magnets. Some of us take to eating the things we were never taught to, or perhaps never meant to, if one looks at it that way, just to belong. And some of us may have even been humiliated by the occasional sudden release of garlicky odors from our lunch boxes at work; or the piquancy of our spices and seasonings that cling to our walls, when visitors come by.

And then there’s the quintessential Indian finger food - “rajma-chawal,” or to a section of us from the South, “thair-saadam,” or yoghurt-rice, which has to be taken with pickle on the side, and smacked and savored to the last morsel. It is rather impossible, and I speak for many from the tribe, hopefully, to relish these foods fully with the aid of spoons and forks. That’s not to say belching, or slurping crudely should be forgiven. In fact, aside from the crackling sound of the papad, the only other sound that can be tolerated at our tables must surely be that of our hearts going “Hmmmmm.”