This has been bothering me and is not a mommy thing...So mommy blog seekers steer clear of this one...
So we live in a world where globalization rules..and it is flat proclaims Thomas Freidman of the NY Times. And so it seems especially along the coasts of this country where states are proudly painted blue during every wishful presidential campaign.... And we immigrants soldier on... confident in our belief of a changing world where all are equal and our kids can go to Stanford...Till you get stopped short so hard and suddenly that the wind is knocked out of you...
What AM I saying you ask? Let me explain...
For starters I live in a pretty rarefied part of American society where most of the people I meet are liberal, many had heard of Bangalore and India before they became a collective bad word for lost jobs and telemarketers...All have college degrees at the very least if not an assortment of other letters signifying even higher education... And so I have had the good fortune to live among people who I thought understood me even if they hadn't seen India itself. Surely they knew there was more than casteism and religious riots? That people knew to wash their hands for the most part and wore clothes and had seen cars? And then this happened...
A few days ago, I had heated up my food at the microwave (only reason packed lunches are tolerable these days!!! We can reheat them!!! YAY!). As usual it seemed to garner the reponse of "mmm your food smells good and "what is that?" and "is it spicy?" All of which I try to treat with modest(!) equanimity and answer politely... In conversation, one person wondered out loud: "I wonder why spicy food is always associated with hot places? It seems rather contrary on the surface of it (we'll bear in mind the summer food this country craves is salad and leave them to their ignorant misery!!!)... To which I had the whole capillary-dilation-leading-to-evaporation-and-cooling theory ready for her and was going to mention it...and then out came this shocker from the mouth of this PhD-bearing person ... "I think maybe the food gets rotten so fast they use the spice to cover up the taste of the bad meat and spoiled vegetables!"...After wiping the remains of my jaw off the floor, it was all I could do to sputter something like "I don't think so" and I was still gasping for air when this person decides it's fine to continue in this vein about rotting food and people from hot countries for about 5 minutes... Aghast sensitive individuals also gathered there at this point decided to try and change the topic but the woman was persistent... and proceeded to ask me if it was so...and so putting on my best cosmopolitan smile and it-doesn't-bother-me-armour I tried to explain how we do not really have rotting food in our fridges and the spices mostly add flavour---a concept until recently completely unknown to the white man!!! Well she remained unconvinced and I remained seething... why do I feel I have to listen to this sort of ignorance from a person who a few days before spoke about eating SQUIRREL stew (so may be I am not in such rarefied society after all) and hunting rabbits for food and other assorted gross meat sources?
It truly boggles the mind that these people consider themselves "civilized" and rush in to save others from perilous things like hmm... rotting food? And what bothers me more is we buy into it... slowly we convince ourselves that what we had done all our lives somehow was bad and profess a great love for salads and fewer spices and health food... We poke fun at the newly landed FOBs who need to add Maggie hot sauce to everything they eat (Hah! those bumpkins with destroyed palates!!) ... And listen to assorted annoying Indian people proclaim "going back to India" for two years to live out the death sentence of no-green-card-at-end-of-H1 in a fancy posh area of Bangalore as an "experience"... So then are we better off being able to appreciate squirrel stew?
So we live in a world where globalization rules..and it is flat proclaims Thomas Freidman of the NY Times. And so it seems especially along the coasts of this country where states are proudly painted blue during every wishful presidential campaign.... And we immigrants soldier on... confident in our belief of a changing world where all are equal and our kids can go to Stanford...Till you get stopped short so hard and suddenly that the wind is knocked out of you...
What AM I saying you ask? Let me explain...
For starters I live in a pretty rarefied part of American society where most of the people I meet are liberal, many had heard of Bangalore and India before they became a collective bad word for lost jobs and telemarketers...All have college degrees at the very least if not an assortment of other letters signifying even higher education... And so I have had the good fortune to live among people who I thought understood me even if they hadn't seen India itself. Surely they knew there was more than casteism and religious riots? That people knew to wash their hands for the most part and wore clothes and had seen cars? And then this happened...
A few days ago, I had heated up my food at the microwave (only reason packed lunches are tolerable these days!!! We can reheat them!!! YAY!). As usual it seemed to garner the reponse of "mmm your food smells good and "what is that?" and "is it spicy?" All of which I try to treat with modest(!) equanimity and answer politely... In conversation, one person wondered out loud: "I wonder why spicy food is always associated with hot places? It seems rather contrary on the surface of it (we'll bear in mind the summer food this country craves is salad and leave them to their ignorant misery!!!)... To which I had the whole capillary-dilation-leading-to-evaporation-and-cooling theory ready for her and was going to mention it...and then out came this shocker from the mouth of this PhD-bearing person ... "I think maybe the food gets rotten so fast they use the spice to cover up the taste of the bad meat and spoiled vegetables!"...After wiping the remains of my jaw off the floor, it was all I could do to sputter something like "I don't think so" and I was still gasping for air when this person decides it's fine to continue in this vein about rotting food and people from hot countries for about 5 minutes... Aghast sensitive individuals also gathered there at this point decided to try and change the topic but the woman was persistent... and proceeded to ask me if it was so...and so putting on my best cosmopolitan smile and it-doesn't-bother-me-armour I tried to explain how we do not really have rotting food in our fridges and the spices mostly add flavour---a concept until recently completely unknown to the white man!!! Well she remained unconvinced and I remained seething... why do I feel I have to listen to this sort of ignorance from a person who a few days before spoke about eating SQUIRREL stew (so may be I am not in such rarefied society after all) and hunting rabbits for food and other assorted gross meat sources?
It truly boggles the mind that these people consider themselves "civilized" and rush in to save others from perilous things like hmm... rotting food? And what bothers me more is we buy into it... slowly we convince ourselves that what we had done all our lives somehow was bad and profess a great love for salads and fewer spices and health food... We poke fun at the newly landed FOBs who need to add Maggie hot sauce to everything they eat (Hah! those bumpkins with destroyed palates!!) ... And listen to assorted annoying Indian people proclaim "going back to India" for two years to live out the death sentence of no-green-card-at-end-of-H1 in a fancy posh area of Bangalore as an "experience"... So then are we better off being able to appreciate squirrel stew?
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