And now moving to my favorite topic of all. "Food, glorious food", Oliver and friends once sang in whiny prepubescent urchin voices. But instead of a destitute orphan boy in industrial London, I feel like the Maharaja of Maharashtra as I gorge myself through India without the shackles of parental constraint nor of self control. While I can't stop and won't stop eating, I'll take a break now and explain what kind of nourishment is making fitting in my airplane seat a pressing concern.
First, chapati. I thought of getting a shirt that says "chapati is life" when I come back. I mean this in a philosophical way as well as in a humorous one. As my host dad, brother, and I were on the roof one evening, my host dad indicated the lone stalk of corn that was growing as a garden centerpiece. What I had thought was an intriguing planting decision actually had a deeper meaning. "We worship what makes us strong", he told me. And since we have chapatis, corn tortillas one uses to scoop up sauce or vegetables or potatos, as an integral part of lunch and dinner every day, chapati indeed makes us strong. It's made fresh in the kitchen twice a day by a cook, if that's the right term, and I'll never grow tired of it.
Daal, or lentil soup, is the other staple of lunch and dinner. Rice with spices and sauce, aloo (potato), gobi (a word for both cabbage and cauliflower), and chai tea (offered 3 times a day) are what I live on. Also, there's a samosa shop reputedly the best in town on the first floor of my apartment building, and the samosas, which are 17 rupees (20 cents), are phenomenal. And then the mitthai, or sweets: laddu, pedha, orange and mango barfee the consistency of sweet fruity fudge, gulabjamun, and more I haven't yet tried.
My friend on the program and I today proposed to our chapatis today. This is my life. We have an major work booklet from Hindi class called "About Me and Food". I don't know how they pinpointed my interests so exactly.
