Spicy food
I spent Monday-Wednesday of this week in Sayla, which is the district of Surendranagr, in central Gujarat. If you've lost your bearing, here is the geographical breakdown:

COUNTRY: India
STATE: Gujarat
DISTRICT: Surendranagar
BLOCK: Sayla
VILLAGE: to be determined

I found out today that India has 12 lakh villages. That is Indian-speak for 1.2 million villages. Some more interesting numbers:

Population of 1 billion.
70% rural, 30% urban
1.2 million villages
by calculation, average village population of 583 people.
20% living below the austerly defined poverty line
35% living below a more reasonably set poverty line
population of gujarat: 60 million.

That means that you can fit 33 Canadas into India, and 2 Canadas into Gujarat alone.

While in Sayla, I ate some very, very spicy food. I can only guess that these foods came straight from hell--nobody should have to endure the simultaneous pain of hot weather and hot food.

On the first day in Sayla, we walked through the 45 degree heat to eat lunch at a road-side restaurant, one of two restaurants in Sayla. The meal was Kathiawari thali--an assortment of vegetarian dishes from southern Gujarat. Never has my mouth burned so much.

The meal started off well enough, although as usual, i was absolutely drenched in sweat from the very start. I have started to notice a pattern of physical sensations during these very spicy meals.

Firstly, the papadum prepares the mouth. Its crispy texture swifly removes the protective outer sheath of the tongue, readying it for the masala onslaught. In the ensuing few bites, although the mouth-burning foods are safely wrapped in chappati, some of it leaks out. Your tongue is now burned on the edges, but still completely capable of transmitting pain to the brain. At this point, you reach for the chaas (buttermilk), but it is too late. Anything that touches the tongue only makes it burn more. As the meal ensues, you become semi-lucid. Finishing the meal and saving whatever dignity you have left become the mission--there is now no concept of enjoying the meal. It is something to be endured, like a root canal. By now, sweat is literally dripping off your forehead, and your nose is running profusely. You dab it with your short shirt sleeves, but quickly run out of space--it is only during these moments that you see the logic in wearing long-sleeved shirts, as all Indians do. Your hands, being full of sauce, are useless.

Strategy comes into play--the most spicy dishes must be identified, and your consumption of them must be punctuated by time, wiping of bodily fluids and cool yoghurt. This is not to say that the pain is lessened. It is simply that your threshold of pain has been reached, and you fear the consequences of pushing your body, imagining possible outcomes as fainting or wetting your pants (which would be quite refreshing, but socially unacceptable).

Invariably, now that you have snot dribbling from your nose to your upper lip and your eyes burn from the sweat and the chilli that entered them when you tried to wipe your nose, the waiter comes around and, in the manner unique to the small towns, tries to cajole you into taking more food (just like home!). I have, at times, be able only to turn my face away, hold my hands over my plate, do anything to convey convincingly that i have enough on my plate already. Verbal communication is impossible, not only because of the language barrier, but because your tongue has decided to run away from your mouth and is now hung loosely around your chin, trying to inch itself into the bowl of yoghurt in front of you.

Finally, you finish the meal. You jump up from the table, make your way through the tears to the wash basin, where you wash the burning agents from your hands, mouth, eyes, neck, ears. Cleansed of the spices as well as any dignity you once had, you return to the table, where your friends are already making plans for the next meal.

This is my experience of many Indian meals. I'm going to McDonalds for dinner tonight.
- posted by aziz @ 10:16 a.m.