Travelers' Tales India

by James O'Reilly

  The meat served in most Indian homes is generally fresh goat meat. The English referred to it as “mutton” and that is what Indians speaking English call it to this day. I refer to it as “lamb,” simply because, in the recipes, Western lamb is the nearest equivalent to our goat and because phrases like “leg of goat” sound somewhat less than felicitous. If the English could get away with “mutton,” I could get away with “lamb.”

  At most Indian meals, aside from the meat, vegetables, split peas, and rice or bread that are served, there are invariably relishes, yogurt dishes, pickles, and chutneys. They round off the full cycle of flavors and textures, adding bite, pungency, and often vital vitamins and minerals as well. They also perk up the appetite, which tends to get sluggish in the hot weather (though, I must add, I have never suffered from this alleged sluggishness).

  We eat with our hands—with the right hand, specifically, the left being used to pick up glasses of water or to serve ourselves more food. Finicky Northerners use just the very tips of their fingers, while Southerners, rather impatient with Northern pretensions, think of the whole hand as an implement—rather like a spoon—and use any part of it if they deem suitable.

  Around the world, food is eaten to fill stomachs and to keep bodies strong and healthy. In India, there is, frequently, a shift in emphasis. We, like everyone else, eat to survive, but we also eat to keep our bodies finely tuned, physically and spiritually.

  The physical fine-tuning is achieved by a series of weekly fasts to “cleanse the system,” and by careful selection of the seasoning used in daily meals. According to the ancient Indian system of Ayurvedic medicine, all spices and herbs have been assigned medical properties. Turmeric, for example, is an antiseptic, both internal and external. Perhaps that is why it is always applied to fish before it is fried. Asafetida is a digestive which combats flatulence. Hence it is always put into pots of dried beans and split peas. Garlic is good for circulatory ailments, coriander and tamarind for constipation, cloves for toning up the heart, and black pepper for giving energy to new mothers. Indians, however subliminally, are aware of this as they cook. I remember arriving in the city of Lucknow recently with the most depressing cough and cold. My octogenarian aunt, whom I was visiting, had already noticed that I had my tea without milk and sugar, my toast without butter, and that I declined offers of clotted cream (malai) that the city residents are very partial to. “No wonder you are sick,” my aunt declared. “But I will fix you up.” At that, she disappeared, returning with a special tea, made with fresh ginger, black peppercorns, cloves, holy basil leaves (tulsi ), and a little sugar. I do not know if it was my aunt’s gentle ministrations or the tea, but I did start to feel much better.

  Fine-tuning the spirit is quite another matter which appeared, at first, very puzzling to me. Millions of Hindus are vegetarian. Three thousand years ago however, our forbears were meat eaters. They even ate beef. Somewhere, as the B.C.s were changing to the A.D.s, the cult, if one can call it that, of vegetarianism began to take hold—and grow. It might have been influenced by Buddhism and Jainism, two very successful movements that preached ahimsa or the “non-hurting of life.” Around this time, the cow also became sacred and its meat taboo. But Hindu vegetarianism today seemed, as I examined it, to have less to do with the hurting of animals than with advancing the individual spirit along its upward path. I discovered that on holy days and on days of partial fasts, it was considered acceptable for vegetarians to eat tubers, moong dal, and rice. Aubergines and tomatoes were not acceptable. Neither was brandy. I did not have much hope for brandy but I did want to know just how it was decided that one vegetarian product was better than another.

  Answers were either unavailable or were of the “my mother and grandmother did it” variety. Finally a friend, the author of a book on Hinduism, offered the explanation which I paraphrase here: In Hinduism, our earthly journey from birth to death is divided into four parts. At first we are students and our duty is to study the scriptures, arts, and sciences. Then we are householders and our duty is to raise and look after our families. But throughout our journey on earth, our souls are seeking union with the Universal Soul, God. To achieve this, starting with the third stage, vanaprastha (literally, “retiring to the forest”), we must move away from worldly things and from all “negative forces” in order to allow our “soul force” to rise upwards. By the fourth stage, which few achieve, we should be totally detached ascetics.

  All things (my friend continued) have their own magnetic force: some are negative, some positive. This applies to everything we eat. The only foods that Hindus should eat on days of partial fasts—and during their later life—are the positive ones.

  On one level of explanation, cow protection, beef avoidance, and the large number of useless cattle can all be safely attributed to religious zeal. Hinduism is the dominant religion of India, and cattle worship and cattle protection lie at the very heart of Hinduism. Few Westerners realize, for example, that one of the reasons for the saintly reputation and mass appeal of Mohandas Gandhi is that he was an ardent believer in the Hindu doctrine of cow protection. In Gandhi’s words: “The central fact of Hinduism is cow protection.… Cow protection is the gift of Hinduism to the world.… Hinduism will live as long as there are Hindus to protect the cow.”

  —Marvin Harris, The Sacred Cow and the Abominable Pig: Riddles of Food and Culture

  But how does one know which foods are “positive” and which “negative?” For most Indians, tradition suffices. Patterns laid down by ancestors are followed without questioning. Those who, like myself, question endlessly, can resort to a “test,” devised, I was told by my friend, by a Swami Poornananda. If a certain seed, a rudraksha, were to be suspended by a thread over a given food, it would begin to swing clockwise if the food was “positive,” counterclockwise if the food was “negative.”

  Could we do the test, I wanted to know. We set up a time and place. All kinds of food, from salt to nuts, were laid out on a large table at some distance from each other. The rudraksha did, indeed, swing in circles, sometimes wildly, sometimes gently, confirming, as I later found out, the detailed calibrations of the Swami. Onions were very “negative.” The seed seemed to show active anger as it swung. Ginger was as “positive” as onions were “negative.” Salt was on the “negative” list, as were garlic cloves, sugar, aubergines, tomatoes, and red chilies. On the “positive” list were honey, ghee, toovar dal, moong dal, limes, almonds, apples, rice, turmeric, ginger, and green chilies. Potatoes were neutral. They seemed to mesmerize the seed to a standstill.

  You may make of this what you will. I know that Indian foods from all its different regions will thrill your palates. They may, if you play your cards right, even uplift your soul.

  Madhur Jaffrey is an author and actress who grew up in Delhi and lives in New York. She is known for her books on Indian cuisine, and has appeared in films, on stage, in television and radio plays. This story is excerpted from her book, A Taste of India.

  Here are some rules for street dining in India. Following them, I never got sick:

  Eat the food when it is freshly prepared. It may take you a while to figure out which food is fresh and which isn’t. When people crowd around a certain cart or fill the tables at open restaurants, you know that the time is right.

  Make sure the cooks look clean and neat, and that the stall or cart is well-organized. A swept dirt floor is superior to a messy marble one.

  Pots or plates should be covered. Choose places that serve on disposable leaves and terra-cotta bowls. Notice if diners include families and women.

  Go to places near the market and where there are the most people and commercial activity. Find out what streets or parts of the city specialize in certain dishes and eat them there; you can ask the doorman at your hotel.

  Drink only bottled water, boiled tea or bottled soda. Some fruit drinks or yogurt drinks such as lassi may have unbottled water or ice mixed into them.

  —Patricia Unterman, “C
ulinary Nirvana in the Streets of India,” San Francisco Chronicle

  The Boxer from Calcutta

  PETER AIKEN

  An unemployed stenographer and former prize-fighter provides a simple lesson in footwork.

  WE DECIDED TO BREAK THE FLIGHT UP BETWEEN BANGKOK AND Nepal by stopping in Calcutta. Leslie, a photographer I was traveling with, was reluctant. She would rather have the mountain views of Darjeeling.

  “We’ll see enough mountains in Nepal. This city is a human phenomenon,” I told her. “It will be fascinating.”

  “But nobody goes to Calcutta,” she said. “It’s just another overcrowded city.”

  The bus from Calcutta Airport dodged some of the boniest white cows on earth. Their hides draped loosely over skeletal haunches, they nosed against the dry earth for edibles. Women in saris squatted by the roadside arranging cow dung into patties to be sundried for fuel.

  We checked into a hostel in the city center that was recommended as being clean, inexpensive, and a good place to get information.

  In the hallway, I asked a fellow traveler what he was doing in the city. I said, “What’s there to see?”

  “In the park, there’s a man selling peanuts to feed the rats that are all around him and on the way to the bridge is a tree with no leaves full of vultures. It’s near the cemetery.”

  He gave directions and we found what he said was true. Leslie had had enough and retired to our room. I continued to Howrah Bridge.

  I stopped to photograph a street scene with beggars sitting on the sidewalk. A man in white walked up to me and said, without introduction, “I am tired of tourists taking pictures of only the nasty things here. When I go to another country, I try to keep memories of the good things.”

  He was just the man I was looking for. I was about to ask him where the good things were when he turned on his heels and was gone.

  I walked on to the bridge and soon reached the bank of the Hooghly River.

  Teeming would be the word—there were thousands of people in sight going about their business; holy men on the banks exercising, foot porters pulling huge baled carts, women with thin crying babies holding up out-stretched palms for alms, Sikhs with turbaned heads. No tourists in sight.

  When I lined up a picture of the bridge, someone cried out, “CIA!” I was confused but took the shot. A policeman walked up behind me and asked what I was doing.

  I told him.

  “Bridges,” he said, “are vital military targets in India and it is forbidden to photograph them.”

  I apologized and left quickly, wondering how it was possible the enemy didn’t have accurate information on this ancient bridge traversed by millions.

  I was stopped once more on my return. While photographing a conference of large black ravens on the riverbank, a stocky Indian dressed in western clothes approached me and I put away the camera. The ravens had looked harmless enough.

  “Good afternoon, sir,” he said.

  I was relieved but wary.

  “Good afternoon,” I replied.

  “Do you know anyone in need of a good stenographer, sir?”

  “No, I don’t believe I do. I’m a visitor here.”

  “Sir, you look trustworthy,” he said and came closer. “I am in trouble. I am a true Christian like yourself, sir, but I am an Indian with a Christian name and these Indians here don’t give us a chance. They call us turncoats and we can’t find work.”

  Rather than tell him I was a Buddhist and completely confuse the issue, I kept quiet. I wanted to hear the whole story.

  “Sir, please read this,” he said and handed me a worn, typed letter. On it was written this:St. Xavier’s School

  4 Ludlow Castle Road

  Delhi 6

  Dear Mr. Manly,

  You may be offering a post to Mr. Lawrence Mitchell. I have known him since a boy and he is a good man. But he will probably tell you that he has been in jail for ten years. This is because of genuine misfortune. He was traveling in a train with a man who tried to attack him and throw away his Bible—in self defense he struck him. He is a trained boxer—he hit too hard in the solar plexus, so the man died instantly. The magistrate should have given a verdict of accidental death but gave one of manslaughter. Mitchell is not a bad man but was overtaken by catastrophe. So I hope this will not spoil his record. He deserves a chance to make good.

  Yours Sincerely,

  Father Luke

  “Sir, why are you copying this down?”

  “If I find someone who needs a stenographer, I’ll be able to show this to him.”

  “But I need assistance now. I have a job waiting for me in Delhi.”

  He took out another letter postmarked Delhi.

  “I don’t have enough for the train fare. I waited six days on the road and no one would give me a lift.”

  “They noticed you were Christian?”

  He pretended not to hear.

  “Can you help me sir? I would like to catch the 4 p.m.”

  I gave him some rupees and wished him luck.

  That evening over a platter of tandoori chicken, Leslie told me of the silk she had bought at bargain prices.

  “The only thing I bought today,” I said, “was a man’s ticket to Delhi.”

  One voyage to India is enough; the others are merely repletion.

  —Sir Winston Churchill, My Early Life

  “Was he a stocky man looking for work?”

  “As a stenographer.”

  “But he was going to Varanasi,” she protested.

  “Either there are a lot of unemployed stenographers in this city or you just got the cheaper fare,” I said.

  “All of the half-starved people and we give to him. He was one of the healthiest men I saw all day.”

  “He was a boxer, remember?”

  Peter Aiken has written for The New York Times, Toronto Globe & Mail, Los Angeles Times, Boston Globe, Islands, Discovery, Travel Holiday, and many other publications. He lives in Nantucket, Massachusetts.

  I was standing on a street corner. A few pedicab drivers were lounging under an awning, awaiting customers who seemed unlikely to come. After a few minutes, one of them detached himself from the group and came up to me.

  “Tell me, sir,” he asked, “do you think violence is inherent in the heart of man, or is it learned?” I said I thought it was probably inherent, that it had to be unlearned. The other drivers came over. We had a seminar. It lasted an hour, under the hot sun.

  —Jon Carroll, “Phantom India Stays in the Mind,” San Francisco Chronicle

  A Wedding in Mahabaleshwar

  JAN HAAG

  An uninvited guest enters the foreign world of a Muslim wedding and is treated like family.

  IN THE LATE AFTERNOON OF A HOT FEBRUARY DAY, I WAS SITTING in a restaurant in Mahabaleshwar with a man from Pakistan. I met him on the bus from Poona when a whole crowded busload missed death by one propitiously placed, huge boulder, which stopped us from plunging over a cliff when the bus lost its brakes. Having become friends, the Pakistani man and I had successfully gone guesthouse hunting together and were now having supper. He was waiting to have his meat, and I was waiting to have my vegetables as we sat on an open veranda high above the street. Below us, the terraces of the Raj’s once famous “hill station” descended step by step down the mountain. It was the time of year when many Indians take their vacations; the town was full. I was looking up the street, which was crammed, as all Indian streets are, with people walking and sitting and living and being.

  Suddenly the crowd erupted. People, who had been walking or standing in the middle of the street, scattered back. A band of men, leaping and hunched, straightening up and doubling over, singing, and playing drums, beating on pots and pans, indeed, pounding on anything that would make noise, came whirling and dancing along. As they moved down the street they circled around a prancing white horse. Astride the horse sat a man, hung like a Maypole with maybe a hundred ribbons on which were strung white flowers. The ribbons
flowed down from his head and cascaded over the horse like streams from a fountain. The blossoms looked like stephanotis: little, waxy-white, trumpet-shaped flowers with their maws facing downward. At points along the ribbons, the white flowers were interspersed with small crimson roses. The horse lifted its hooves high; the man sat perfectly still. His companions drummed, cried out, leapt, laughed, and sang.

  “What is it?” I asked my companion.

  “A wedding,” he said, “a Muslim wedding.”

  “Is that the groom?”

  “And his friends.”

  “And the bride?”

  “She’s at home. Would you like to go?”

  “Go?”

  “To the wedding?”

  “Do you know them?”

  “They would be delighted to have you.”

  I giggled. I couldn’t imagine dropping in on the wedding of someone neither he nor I knew. Nonetheless, I had been wandering the subcontinent long enough to shed some of my American “cool,” and had even began to develop some of the friendly nosiness and ravenous curiosity of an Indian. I watched as the beautifully flowered young man came by. His head was bowed under a crown, and the ribbons of stephanotis were so dense around his face that I couldn’t see through them. “Yes, let’s go,” I said. But still unable to shake the Western ideas of decorum, I couldn’t help adding, “If we may.”

  My Pakistani friend then assured me he couldn’t go, but that I must.

  “Why can’t you go?”

  “It wouldn’t be proper.”

  I never did get quite clear on his reasoning. It might have been that he was unmarried, and, therefore, mustn’t go to a wedding; or that he, a Pakistani, was in India somewhat illegally, and, therefore, mustn’t be seen at anything so public as a wedding; or that it was unseemly for a strange man to go to a wedding, but not for a strange woman; or that he, as a Muslim, mustn’t look upon a woman who was a bride. I never did quite understand his explanation, but my curiosity pulled me to see more of the ceremony that included this enchanting “knight” on the white horse: a flower bedecked version of the dreams of all Western maidens. I fancied that, above the scent of the street, the spice and dung odor of all Indian streets, I could even smell the flowers. I had never seen anything—anyone—so beautiful. In his long white satin tunic and his tight white satin pants on the white horse with the white flowers, he was a veritable vision of loveliness.