I’ve been following the ‘ethnic’ grocery store thread with great interest. And it made me think not only just about different types of food, but different ways of eating and drinking.
I spent my early childhood in the USA. When I was 10, my parents made the decision to move back to India. In preparation, my mother instructed me on how to eat with my hands, and said I shouldn’t ask for cutlery in India otherwise people would think I’m too Westernised and snobbish. The next 14 years I ate almost exclusively with my hands. In some nicer restaurants cutlery would be provided - nobody cared how cutlery was used, ie which implement was used for what purpose or held in which hand. I remember some peers applying for Rhodes scholarships would undertake to learn ‘proper’ table manners as they had to attend some sort of formal dinner as a test of who got the scholarships.
Then I moved to the UK. Mostly eating on my own in national health service doctors accomodation, using hands for Indian food and my haphazard cutlery skills for ‘Western’ food apart from stuff like sandwiches and pizza (people in the UK seem to like eating pizza with a knife and fork, which I still can’t get. In the US everyone seemed happy to eat pizza with their hands). One evening a British registrar took his minions, including me, out to dinner at his favourite local Italian trattoria. I didn’t know what grissini were, which was bad enough. Then I proceeded to tackle a piece of steak in a way that caused my reg to ask if I was some sort of barbarian, did he need to cut up my food for me and could I please stop being so embarrassing. Thankfully another minion got quite drunk and caused a scene soon afterwards so the spotlight on my terrible ignorance was diverted elsewhere.
My cutlery skills are still sloppy. I prefer eating with my hands. My chopstick skills are also very bad but Vietnamese colleagues I’ve had the honour of working with are much more forgiving and amused with my lack of dexterity.
Why is eating with hands considered so unacceptable in the West? I’m not talking about sandwiches or pizza but about stuff like rice with curries or dal. If I eat flatbreads and food with my hands, why is it considered disgusting if I mix my food and rice with my hands and deliver it to my mouth without creating a mess? I think some foods taste much better when eaten with hands and it allows for personalised mixing of various components of the meal.
I remember the article as I am a Guardian reader. It sort of highlighted the opposite issue - that of born and bred Western people having to assimilate a culture that wasn’t mainstream to them. Thanks for signposting to the HO thread, which I found more interesting than the Guardian article.
Um, for the same reason that eating with utensils is considered so unacceptable in India—as your mother told you? Culture is what culture is, and it’s different in different locations.
I’ve spent a lot of time in India over many years. During my first visit there, I learned there to eat with my hands, staying with my friends’ parents in Chennai. It took a lot of overcoming mental bias to be comfortable digging into a bowl of curd rice with my hand, as an adult. But now if I’m in India I eat that way, if I’m in the US/Europe I eat with silverware, if I’m in east Asia I eat with chopsticks, if I’m in Thailand I eat with a spoon and fork. It’s not so hard to assimilate.
You moved at age 10 right? Weren’t the Western cutlery skills already ingrained by then?
Curious where you moved to.
We used cutlery in our school lunch cafeteria (in Bombay). We also used cutlery to eat non-Indian food both at home and at restaurants.
I remember an uncle who moved to the US for grad school after working for many years remarked to me once that we were “lucky” that we had been taught to use cutlery correctly young, because he had to learn by observation and error – probably not dissimilar experiences to yours. But he was born in the 50s in a less restaurant-happy and globally-exposed time. (But it was still super confusing to me because his parents used cutlery with ease.)
Who considers it disgusting / unacceptable in your circle? That’s very sad.
I’ve been eating Indian food with my hand the whole time I’ve been in the US (ie since college).
I’m going to guess @travelmad478 was possibly referring to the fact my mom made me learn to eat with my hands before we moved to India because she was worried what people there might think if I ate with cutlery? But the context was we moved back to India of the 1980s, which still had limited exposure to Western lifestyles because it was the 1980s when air travel was still not very accessible to most and Indian TV was only like one state-controlled Indian channel with only Indian programming. So some brown kid pitching up and asking for cutlery would often be met with a raised eyebrow. Because owner of said eyebrow might be unaware that brown kid’s parents were raising them in America and possibly making efforts to ensure their kid assimilated into ‘American’ culture and wasn’t teased for being ‘ethnic’.
My experience of India nowadays is that the majority of people don’t bat an eyelid if you want to eat with cutlery there, even for Indian food. There might be some weird initiation rites for white people marrying into Indian subcontinent families (as per the Guardian article Saregama linked) but I’ve never seen that happen myself.
Is this something you wish to improve upon??
If so, there are plenty of youtube videos showing proper use of cutlery.
Similar to what another poster stated “Culture is culture”… There is an old saying “When in Rome, do as the Romans”
A friend of mine comes over for (homemade) Sushi from time to time, my girlfriend & I use chopsticks. He didn’t know how to use them, but wanted to learn. I picked up a couple packs of these “Chopstick helpers”, which seem to help him learn. (again, if you want to improve your chopstick skills)
In hindsight, my cutlery skills at age 10 prior to the move to India probably weren’t good. My parents certainly never taught me anything about how to use cutlery (I guess they struggle the same as I do). I have a feeling they just plonked down whatever they felt was appropriate and if the food got eaten, then that was job done. Our non-Indian food was mostly stuff like hamburgers and pizza and tacos from chain restaurants! And in good weather, my sister and I hardly ever sat down for lunch or dinner, we would be playing outside, while running to my mom to have her push our food into our mouths in the form of the little rice balls she had mixed by hand with curry and lentils on a plate. It was a winning solution for everyone - she only needed one big plate to feed the kids where she mashed everything up and formed it into balls and the kids didn’t have to stop playing to have dinner. I can still remember her sitting on the back patio with the plate, chatting with our next door neighbour and forming the rice balls while we ran around in the backyard. Sometimes the neighbours’ kids who weren’t Indian would also join in our dinner and be fine with having some Indian food delivered into their waiting mouth in the form of a ball.
We moved to Kolkata in the mid 80s. It was (and probably still is) very provincial compared to Mumbai.
I’ve had experiences in the UK where people openly express their amazement/discomfort if they come across an Indian person eating Indian food with their hands. My boss is one such person. And the last big argument I had with my husband was when he asked me why I ate my dinner with my hands in front of our kid’s piano teacher and husband. It was Indian food I was eating at home with guests present, I didn’t feel the need to ask their permission to do so. He said I made them feel uncomfortable, I said he was overreacting. Anyway, it ended up being a big argument and I’m not going to apologise for eating Indian food with my hands.
And I’ve had Indian friends visiting me ask if I minded if they ate with their hands - the fact they even felt they needed to ask this is telling.
That’s a good tip. I might check YouTube for tips on using cutlery with specific foods. Leafy salads are a particular bugbear of mine. Might check out YouTube for chopsticks tips too. A friend once taught me a cheap hack for the ‘chopstick helper’ gadget. You can wind a rubber band around the top ends and it is essentially the same thing. I just feel like I’m very clumsy with chopsticks even though I can manage to eat most meals in Chinese or Vietnamese restaurants with them. It’s just that the expert users seem so incredibly dexterous and elegant compared to me. I once saw a woman at a hotel in HCMC eat a chicken wing with chopsticks - she got every morsel of meat off that wing while looking like a million dollars.
That’s so interesting you would say that. I’da thunk that slapping a nicely cut slice o’ pristine fish atop a small mound of rice would be far easier than making rolls — even tho my first (and favorite) boss in the US pronounced it “as easy as rolling a joint.”
You are correct and I’m no expert with chopsticks, either. I imagine like anything else “Practice makes Perfect”.
My goal was to help my friend learn a new skill (that he wanted to learn). I didn’t know about the rubber band, but yes… it sounds similar.
As a side note, I don’t think it was appropriate for your boss to say what he said in front of the other workers. I think a private (less demeaning) conversation would have been more appropriate. (not very professional on his part)
