Hands-On

“Aren’t you going to use a spoon to eat rice?  What you are eating is not Indian after-all” .   As much as I love eating, I totally detest cooking.  A few days back when I did enter  the kitchen and prepared  Thai Red Curry with rice, the above- sentence came from my cousin just  as I had sat down to enjoy the fruits of my labour and had  dipped my fingers in the curry laden rice.

  I am not a fan of activities that are done simply because tradition demands so, except when it comes to eating with hands.  I eat like a complete desi. Using my fingers for eating almost anything on the plate and when I can’t use my fingers I simply drink the item straight from the utensil.  The use of any kind of cutlery is strictly for two occasions.  First when I am feeling too lazy to wash my hands prior to eating or when I am in a hurry and have no time to indulge in the leisurely Indian way of eating. For all other times, my fingers are my spoon/ fork/ knife and any other cutlery item that are used in the rest of the world.

A few years Oprah Winfrey in one of her episodes where she was in an Indian household  had commented “"I heard some Indian people eat with their hands still?" .  I would expect a person of Oprah’s stature to do her home-work well before she made such comments about a culture that is not her own. People eat with knives, forks, spoons, chopsticks and  so also  with hands. There is nothing to be  surprised about the use of fingers for eating food.  The use of fingers as a primary tool for eating is neither uncommon in the  South Asian region nor  is it a habit to be frowned upon. Ophra’s remark that could have been a simple statement depicting a cultural  practice appeared as a   judgement on  the eating habits of the Indian population from an extremely ethnocentric perspective.  The use of the word "still" which without ambiguity implies her faulty correlation between eating with hands and backwardness also reflects her ignorance about the country’s common practices. In one sweeping, general statement  Ophra  linked the usage of cutlery to  the progress of India. How silly of me to think that the Metro Rail that that has come up in the last 10 years and  is the pride of all India is progress. How innocent of me to think that sending a satellite to Mars in much less a cost as compared to our western counterparts is progress. How childish of me to think that having the highest percentage of voting in the history of free India is progress. Apparently, progress is all about  eating with fork & knife.    For me using any sort of extension , apart from my fingers, for eating my food isn’t the sign of superiority, it is just  insignificant  to an Indian meal. It’s a pure nuisance.

I recently came across a video by NDTV titled “ Some Indian have really disgusting table manners”. The 3:13 minutes video has a slightly overweight man sitting at a table where he is served ( Or rather the dishes appear magically in front of him) with different varieties of food. From tea to noodles. He is shown eating and drinking everything in a rather sloppy manner.  The video was an extremely sorry attempt to laugh at oneself.   Since it is a spoof, the clip is an exaggerated version of what happens in real life and looks like a deliberate attempt to portray things that do not even exist. In one scene the man is shown chucking the chopsticks and diving his hands into the noodles. We may not be even beginners when it comes handling chopsticks but  anyone who has eaten noodles even from a road side vendor has been served with a  fork.  We actually know when using our hands would not serve any useful purpose in so far as feeding ourselves is concerned.

Eating with hands is generally associated with messiness and the idea of the whole process being unhygienic.    Eating by hand is a messy experience only if you are sloppy by nature. It has nothing to do with your hands. Now coming to the habit being unhygienic. Pardon me but I think anyone who makes a statement like this is only propagating the myth. It is by far the cleanest experience. One cannot circumvent the hand-washing ritual that is an integral part of the process of feeding oneself by hands. South Asian region is perhaps the only region  where the Red Cross Societies and other NGOs teach the importance of effective hand-washing to school children in order  to avoid preventable diseases. In fact, Uniliver’s soap brand has  a CSR  initiative on promoting healthy living through a simple act of washing one’s hands with an antiseptic soap. 

Now that we have established that eating san cutlery would not land you in the hospital as commonly perceived, let us break another myth. The myth being that eating by hand is exclusively practised by   South Asians.  Pizzas, french fries, hot- dogs, barbecued meat any one? I have not seen a soul using anything but their humble fingers to eat these items. I am also told that cooking slabs of beef, slices of mystery meat called Spam, Buffalo Wings, etc. in the open & eating it off paper-plates with fingers is the norm. What about “finger food” as some people call “hors d'oeuvres”. If all these items are eaten by hand how is it that the South Asians get branded as “messy eaters”?

I am reminded of a joke.  Mahatma Gandhi was once at a dinner with the Queen of England and the Queen apparently commented on the Mahatma eating food with his hands and how it could be unhealthy. The Mahatma said - While I understand that eating with my hands means risking germs, it’s still better than eating with cutlery that has tasted several mouths before mine.  It’s been many years since the incident took place but it really sums up the ignorance when it comes to  India and other South Asian countries, which unfortunately still exists in some places. 

 Eating with hands  has traditional medical wisdom behind it. According to Ayurveda, the traditional Hindu system of medicine using your fingers for eating has many health benefits.  Eating with your hands means you can’t multi-task. No checking of emails, no answering of phones or texting. You give full concentration to your food and enjoy it. Eating with your hands allows the many thousands of microbes on the food to get acquainted with the many thousands of microbes on your fingers. Our hands and feet consist of the five elements, i.e. space, air, fire, water and earth. Each finger transforms the  food in digestive form before it passes to the human digestive system. This in turn improves digestion, enhances the pleasure of eating as the feeling of taste and textures are heightened.

No childhood memory is as precious as that of  the balls of daal and bhat being fed to you by the elders in your family. In our home  there was always a competition between my sister and I to see who would finish the daal-bhat balls on our respective thalis first. Pure Bliss!

 Imagine a day when people would use knives and forks to eat  masala dosa. Did I hear you say the words  unimaginable and hilarious? That’s precisely it. I rest my case.