He looks like any of us. It is only when he starts talking that his accent betrays where he his from: the U.S. It is not easy for him on this trip to India to attend a cousin’s wedding. Though he finds everything “awesome”, the culture-shock numbs him. His challenges are many, none greater than navigating through a South Indian wedding lunch served on a banana leaf.
The food is now arrayed all over the banana leaf. It is a typical menu: vegetables, coloured rice, vadai, avial, poli, jaangri, payasam and the items keep coming. Without his spoon, fork and cereal bowl, our teenager is all at sea! The guest sitting next to him eggs him on. “It is easy! You pick up rice with your fingers and eat like this!” It is as if he has been suddenly thrust into the cockpit of an aeroplane and told to fly it on his own! His NRI mother sits at the next leaf. She has coached him to a point, but not for this eventuality.
Gingerly, he uses his fingers to pick up one grain of rice at a time. At this rate, the next Ice Age will set in, she scolds him! He reaches out for simpler items such as “pappadam”. He grips the entire disk with both hands and takes one big bite. The crackling bits take a parabolic path, some right into a leaf three rows away! A couple of children watch this spectacle from the opposite row and giggle!
He consults his mother and asks for a spoon. Multiple people scramble to find a spoon, but there is none. The closest to a spoon is the ladle used to serve sambar! Mother shoots down the idea. It will look silly as if he was Ghatotkacha eating with a ladle!
Servers in a tearing hurry will pour a litre of hot sambar on the banana leaf before they move to the next one. It is here that the teenager’s skills are found wanting. The sambar swirls like the raging sea in a tsunami; it engulfs the rice mounds and overflows right out of the banana leaf, straight into the his lap! It all happens in a split second. “Mom! What am I supposed to do? It is flowing all over!” Mom is now angry. “You cannot just sit doing nothing,” she screams.
Relatives are quick to comment, “This is exactly why you should come to India more often! How will he otherwise learn our customs?” If only mom had brought his peanut-butter sandwich, she could have saved herself from this embarrassment. She mutters, “I am never coming to India again. Even if I come, it will be on my own. The kids can bond with their father back in the U.S. watching their Super-Bowl matches!”
Where is the father? The father was last spotted in a different corner, unmindful of all this commotion. He was busy conversing about driverless cars in the U.S. and how they would navigate through obstacles such as cows on Indian roads! He is ignorant that the clouds in his horizon are darkening by the minute and knows not what awaits him, once he reaches home! Till then, he can continue talking!
