Cardamom and Milk: The Taste of India

lovely, huh?....
It’s dinnertime in India. Oh joy. Let the guessing game begin. The waiters throw down the plates: Spices. Heavy spices. Burn-your-taste-buds-until-your-tongue-falls-off spices. And curry. Multicolored, thick and goopy curries. And then there’s that stuff. Goat stomach? Sheep’s tongue? I don’t even know. I can’t, nor do I want to, identify this heap of tissue on my dish. I am from America, I am American, I am the daughter of a system of nutritional facts. There are labels even on water. I miss my USDA. I want my FDA guarantee. There is no guarantee here. Nothing is guaranteed in India.

I get up to wash my hands. They are dirty from the naan and sauce mishmash. It was like finger-paints. My hands are simultaneously dripping and cakey. India’s culture has spoiled them. Thanks a lot tradition. I bow down to you, ancestors of old. Yea right. Sure, I’ll sacrifice my shorts, a few hours to jetlag, even my cellular addiction, but not my fork, knife, and even napkin in order to “respect” the customs of this place. I hate this mess. I feel like a barbarian. This isn’t my idea of a family vacation. Why did we have to come here? Only to get our hands dirty?

I return to the table after washing up in the hole-in-the-ground bathroom. Don’t even get me started about the hygiene here; its nonexistence is obvious in the number of cockroaches, lizards and wild monkeys running around everywhere. I swear it’s like a zoo. I went to the market yesterday and I saw a hairless, black, dog-like thing licking the curb clean underneath a fruit vendor. I guess it felt my stare, because it looked into my eyes, and rose onto its filthy haunches, surprisingly easily. Those were human eyes staring back at me. It was like looking into an upside down mirror. But my reflection was soon interpreted when a real dog scuttled along. My creature yelled out a cry and followed it in a wild chase, grimy teeth gnashing, the drool and flies he left behind the only proof of his existence. Ew, gross. I stare back at my dish, trying to suppress the nausea of my prior memory. But looking at this hodgepodge doesn’t help. It only reminds me of the zoo outside the restaurant doors. But why subject it to outside? Roaches can climb anywhere. They don’t care if kitchens are supposed to be clean. But I do. There’s a strange hard-shelled, shiny, black thing floating next to my sea of ochre. Are those antennas? I close my eyes. Garnish or not, I don’t want deal with it. Not now, not ever.

I sit back in my darkness. I attempt to suppress the dissatisfaction in my soul by trying to center myself mentally, and put a smile on for my grandparents and their company. I try to channel my inner chi; mind over matter, right? Funny, this is the most Indian-like thing that I am willing to buy into. Yeah, I’m a tourist, but India’s in my blood. Even right after we got off the plane, I saw past the fabrication, the damask silks and colorful kumkums that the locales tried to push. Sure the cheap saris were attractive enough, but only if you are a sap that likes to give in to extremely exaggerated and fake representations of culture. There is nothing authentic in the mangos-on-a-stick, the flower leis, or the Om tee shirts. That’s not India. Locales would laugh if you wore that. Laugh, just like they laugh at the shiny Indian McDonald’s, where those happy-go-lucky tourists stare shiny-eyed with glee at the vegetarian options on the dollar menu. I can here them: “Quick honey, take a picture next to the ‘Indian Ronald!’” Raj Ronald…the patron saint of tourism and fake reality. And that’s the “authentic” experience foreigners flip out travelers cheques for. Ha. I hate the touristic front. Thank God, I can at least tell the real from the fake. It’s because I’m half Indian. But then why do I feel so sick now? I’m still half Indian, I convince myself. My fraction seems to grow smaller. This isn’t culture shock; it’s just a test of my personal standards. Tourist has nothing to do with it…right?

I clear my mind. Just breathe. I inhale deep. The restaurant’s jasmine inscents float gracefully amongst the pungent tones of cumin and tarragon and mix into my lungs. Did the owner really think that this delicate smell could overpower the massacres being made in the kitchen? I feel bad for the inscent. I mean, it’s being used in vain. It’s compromising its true potential just for show. Its just burning there, kinda like me. I am just burning here. No one can smell me. No one can appreciate my sweetness because of all the other, stronger, cultural fumes smothering my soft airs. The Indian culture is my tarragon, the society my cumin. Because of India, I can’t wear my dresses. I can’t go out by myself. If I wear makeup my grandparents look down on me. I can’t be me. My inscents can’t burn free, and dance in the Indian air without censure. The native people only look at my light skin. And so they stare. They call me beautiful. But they don’t know me. They only smell a tourist and thus an exotic. India’s nose is full of tarragon and cumin: the flavors against me. And so I feel for the jasmine sticks. Made in India or not, I try to sniff them out. Maybe I will buy some later. Yes, I will light them in my makeshift room. I will light them, and for once, there be no Otherness in the atmosphere. Just the purity I wish to burn. The jasmine will be free to burn strong. I smile: I will fill the Indian air with jasmine. Fill the Indian air with me. I exhale, and I feel a bit better.

The food is gone. I managed to miss that. Great, I wonder what else I must have missed while lost in my “foreign-ness”, my “Otherness”. I glance at the open mouths of my Indian company, prattling away in strange chatter. What are they saying? Ugh, that’s exactly what my American-ness is making me miss: the language, the heritage. Thanks dad, for not teaching me. Your laziness has made paranoid. I’m lost in translation. My grandmother glances at me while others point in my direction, still babbling away in random pitches, inflections and yells. Are they talking about me? Should I smile? Or is that weird? I have no idea what’s going on. How can I follow anything here? Isn’t dinner conversation supposed to engage everyone? Or is that not the custom here? Why don’t they speak English for god sakes?! I know they can! Didn’t they learn English in school? They must have. I’ve heard those outsourced telemarketers, who always call my house with an Indian accent as thick as their chutney, who swear their names are Bob or Andy or Mike? They speak English! And my cousins say American curse words all the time! And isn’t that just great? Most often that’s all I can understand. Add that to my vocab list: Namaste, naan, masala, tandoori…bloody, hell, wicked, cool, what’s up man, damn. That will get me far. A few days ago, in effort to tire myself out, I tried to watch the TV. It was pointless. Today, I tried to order and I gave up after just skimming the place’s name. And body language? Baloney. Everything is so backwards here. They kiss feet instead of cheeks. Besides, nothing can replace words. I am mute here. The rickshaws blare, the cars honk, and the poor cry. In India, the loudest country I have ever experienced, I live in silence. I return to the foreign conversation at the table. Even amongst my own family, I am a foreigner. Stupid language. Thanks dad, thanks India.

I guess my grandma sees the tears in my eyes. She looks at me, concerned. I get that much. I may be on vacation, but that doesn’t mean I am oblivious. I make up a quick excuse: “I feel sick.” She understands. She turns to the waiter and commands in up-and-down inflections, hand gestures included. I give up trying to follow. My head will only spin faster. “You should drink something,” she tells me straight. All I want is water. Ice cold pure. And in a glass. But of course not, not here: it might be contaminated, I might get sick, I might become that one unlucky American girl no ones ever heard of, but no one wants to be, who got that rare virus that proved to be so randomly fatal; the one doctors use as warnings to patients afraid of shots, the one that covers the headlines for a day or maybe even two. I guess that’s the only way a traveler really experiences the fullest form of the international, through sensational media, strattling the world at once. “What a death,” the papers will read, “Poor little American girl…”

Hot steaming dissatisfaction. The waiter sets down the chipped mug in front of me. Its mocking steam slaps my face.
“Drink,” my grandmother demands. They always command here. No please, no thank you, no if you’d like. I miss politeness. But that’s just a minor detail. I stare back at my lonely self on the drink’s glassy surface. Another mystery. What is it this time? Ugh. This travel thing is so frustrating. I can only take so many new experiences. I have my threshold.
“Drink,” my grandmother presses again. But I don’t want to. How is she so sure that this dark, hot thing will make me feel better? She doesn’t understand. It doesn’t even smell good. Unless its home, liquefied, I don’t want to try it. Try, try, try, that’s all I have done ever since I came here. Why can’t India try me? Let me be me, here. The tourist title is stupid anyway. I have a real name, a real personality. And I’m not just a loud, talking never-can shut up American girl. That’s what my family expected. My cousins, my blood cousins, even anticipated me to be blonde. They were disappointed to see that my dark hair matched theirs, and that I was quiet. And so, in being me, I began to realize America was giving me a bad rap.
“Drink!” and the mug is pushed into my face. I force down a hot gulp. My mind closes up immediately. The foreign heat sinks down my throat. I contort my alien face. It tastes…good. I sip more. I smile. I could get used to this. It is some form of tea, I deduced that much. At home, my taste buds were basically weaned on tea. Even though I know there’s more to this concoction, I don’t care. I can live with this unknown. I embrace the mug, the strange, and the foreign. It is like I am embracing India for the first time. And I like it; it actually tastes good; it makes me feel better. So there is something here I can connect to. It makes me feel at home. My situation shines anew. Even in this dirty, colorful, smelly, loud restaurant, I feel like I can travel safe. No barriers, no passports. Just me and India together, like this mug and me. And not foreign me, strange me, tourist me, American me, or even half-Indian me, just me: just the tea-me.

The grandmother smiles upon her granddaughter with love. “She loves cardamom and milk,” she carefully explains to her companions. And so no one is lost, she repeats it in English. Their eyes meet, and the grandmother and granddaughter exchange smiles in the Indian heat: for the first time, they both really do understand.