I am speaking slowly to improve my enunciation,, so I may sound like a strangled frog!
It will get better! Listen on!
Hello. I am Rajiv. When I look back at my posts on tramping, I realize with shock that food, adventures or experiences are missing from the narratives. Does this mean I don't eat food or enjoy the pleasures of eating? Of course not. People describe me as a foodie when they feel I kindly towards me. Sometimes they refer to me as a greedy pig who cannot think of anything beyond food.
Food is integral to life, as is understanding the culture of a place.
I believe that you should eat like the locals wherever possible.
Allow me to repeat that line. I believe that you should eat like the locals wherever possible. I have traveled to many countries, and I've lived in a few of them. I've also lived and traveled across India. We all have our favorite comfort foods and meals, and no one can deny this statement. Breakfast is my favorite meal. Breakfast is almost sacred, and I adore eggs. So when I traveled to small towns in China and peered at the options, sadness always overwhelmed me.
I've eaten and enjoyed the thousand-year egg, but I don't like them for breakfast. It's just the way that it is.
I was once in Manila, and I went to the office. This was back in my corporate days. We left my hotel at 530 in the morning to reach the office at about 745. They took me to the canteen and offered me breakfast, and I said yes!!
I love beef, but they put beef and rice before me. I asked for an egg and ask for toast, and they looked confused. They got me the egg, but there was no bread. So I had a fried egg on top of steamed rice.
Another time, I took an early flight from Bombay to Rajkot. Court.
My sales team met me and insisted they treat me to an authentic Gujarati breakfast. Now, what can I say? Given the choice, I will always choose a Chinese breakfast over a Gujarati one.
Traveling or moving to an unfamiliar area or territory will expose you to local food and customs. The locals do not ask you to arrive at the shows. You went there. I have met many Indians in Shanghai who have consistently criticized Chinese eating habits. And when I would spend an evening with these people, I joined them in rolling up my eyes, throwing up my arms, and wondering what the world was coming to. We'd all say, Look at these disgusting, horrible Chinese people. Can you imagine what they eat?
And so the evening would go on. Criticizing Chinese food habits was a great way to break the ice.
But when I was with my Chinese friends and colleagues, I always experimented with joy. So I ate so much food and many kinds of food in China that people began to think of me as almost a Chinese person.
I've eaten many kinds of food in China, India, and other countries. Sometimes my hosts hold me up because the wrong way. Now, once and when I was in the small town of Uttarpara, Bengal, I ate at my distributor's house. The town had no restaurants,so we always ate with them.
We went upstairs to the first floor to the dining area, where our distributors’s sister served us rice with vegetables and fish. Now, I'm a proud Punjabi, and in the proud Punjabi tradition, I mixed everything up. Just as I was about to dig my paws into the food, she shrieked into my ear. Now, I don't remember if she called me an imbecile or a savage, but I recall her telling me I was insulting Bengali food. And another plate arrived, and the rice stood like Mount Everest in the center of the plate, and vegetables and fish surrounded the mountain. I looked down at my plate with trepidation, wondering how to finish the lot. The quantity and eating techniques seem beyond me. Didi, or elder sister, took charge and guided me on the proper eating sequence and technique.
The meal was heavy. The meal was delicious. But I wanted to roll over and go to sleep after we finished the food. But she refused to give me a bed, so I had to return to the office. Now, sometimes you encounter impassable barriers. A few months after arriving in China, I took the organization and my French boss to Bo Ao, a beach resort in South China. The two of us sat next to each other at lunchtime, plunged our chopsticks into the soup, and fished out the chicken feet, complete with claws.
We dropped the chicken feet and they plopped back into the soup, and I looked around the table, looked at my Chinese friends and said, Guys, I have reached my cultural boundary. I said I am prepared to be culturally sensitive, but there are boundaries. Now, my Chinese friends never understood how I always rejected this delicacy until one day I invited them to India to eat goat's brains and they squealed in disgust at the thought of brain curry. And they went, Ew ! Ow! Ew? How can you eat? Bring curry. But they never again questioned my disgust for chicken feet.
Now, let's see. I can't undo the past, but maybe I could write about my food experiences in future posts. And I wonder, should I write about some of my international travel, especially concerning food? Or make a few podcasts about them. And if you like, let me know.
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