Day 4

I have tasted India.

I have tasted the culmination of a culmination of art and mind and practice into 1 big version of what America dreams to be (over a 1000 years earlier).

It was tasty alright.

The meal was on the 2nd floor (3rd for us) of The House of MG, Bhadra Road, Opp. Sidi Saiyad Jali, Lal Darwaja, Ahmedabad, Gujarat 380001

Here’s the menu:

(both sides):

You can ignore the text on the left side, and focus on the display to the right. It’s just a floor plan, but one that seems incohesive. There’s like a bunch of stuff that doesn’t seem to mesh. Juice and….. Chaat, salad and rice (separated?), 2 sweet dishes? Like what is this? Does Indian food disregard the notion of courses (soup ==> salad ==> entrée ==> dessert)? But they also have appetizers, as indicated by the first sheet (and salad/chutney is separate too). But if the image has them all on the same plate, then they mean to coexist, right?

It seems that India has no trend; stuff is thrown every which way (well not thrown really:

(PLEASE CLICK THIS LINK https://imgur.com/a/wXtvQ)

And in color it looks nice too:

Not to mention appetizers:

so at least it’s beautiful, right?)

But isn’t a hefty steak beautiful too? And that has a trend: beef. It’s a slab of beef. It needs no compliment (apart from wine maybe, but that’s its own realm, linked to steak only through pretentiousness), apart from the occasional intimidated green. But the steak is so dominating. Maybe it’s the culmination of the masculine idea of MEAT! It’s a hunk of muscle that’s better if undercooked. It’s kind of odd that it’s in this realm of elite culture, steak is, when meat has a history of warriors chomping the meat off the bone of a turkey leg that airport security would classify as a blunt object. It’s a business-y kind of masculinity.

But Indian food isn’t insecure: Nothing dominates anything else, because nothing needs to. If steak is a triumphant warrior, Thali (the name of the meal) is a community. Every taste works together. There’s no one best taste, because that would imply something rules all else, making for an experience that’s repetitive, with one taste being pushed over and over and over and over again, numbing you.

And I want to stress that it wasn’t an instant experience. It was a duration of combining each and every vegetable (or “vegetation”, as one traveler remarked) with each and every soup and bread and rice and appetizer and chutney, discovering that everything tastes good with everything (but not all at once).

That’s what India is. Everything works together: art and culture and practice. America’s secretly jealous because the cultures all have a sense of self, but they get along. Nothing’s boxed off, because nothing needs to be. It’s free because nothing cares to dominate.

It’s really wonderful that such a place as India exists, and translates itself into a raw sensation: food on the tongue.

Footnote: Wifi access has been tight, with time even tighter. My posts are easier to upload because they’re written on a computer. Ellie’s posts are first in a journal, so they require more time. Also, my keyboard stopped working. It’s like something doesn’t want us to blog….. but we will.