My Life Revolves Around Food (Part One: A Realisation)
on From Banglatown to Bangladesh (Bangladesh), 20/Jun/2009 13:00, 34 days ago
My life revolves around food.This statement is a realisation. Despite its apparently confessional nature, it does not intend to indicate an obsessive disposition developed in the Desh on my part, nor is it a sign of an urgent need for me to visit‘Overeaters Anonymous’. It is merely a realisation, gained during a much-overdue phone conversation with a much-loved friend a few weeks ago.In the conversation, I was asked to describe my day. I proceeded to outline what was a fairly typical Saturday: the English class I was supposed to be helping at had been cancelled, I got called into the office for a last-minute meeting, I was invited to eat mangoes and other assorted tropical fruits at a friend’s house, and then to lunch at one of her friend’s houses, where despite the huge plate of rice, various vegetable curries, and eggs* I consumed, I was told that my hosts were disappointed with how little I had eaten. In the afternoon, I had a craving for a walk, and for some pineapple, and sowandered up to a nearby market, where salesmen and women squat or sit cross-legged in front of their wares. That day however there were no pineapples in sight, so I took a ten-minute rickshaw journey to the main bazaar, bought the desired pineapples (two for ten Taka, or about ten pence), plus someattractive-looking fresh lychees, and went home. By the time the phone-call took place, I was eating said lychees, and wondering what to make for dinner.None of the above is surprising, if you consider my context. In a country in which any meal that doesn’t include rice is considered a ‘snack’ - even if said meal is a plate of noodles, followed by fruit and biscuits, a standard meal itself in other countries – every social event involves food in one capacity or another. If you go to someone’s house, on an invitation or as a spur of the moment decision, you will always be fed. If you go to a stall for a cup of tea, you will generally also eat ‘pitha’ (cake). Even if you don't, the thick glop of condensed milk, sugar and tea leaves that is 'ca' in Bangladesh offers the calorie-equivalent of a meal itself. And if you go to 'take a little bit', code for drinking rice wine, you will also eat: not the shared packets of crisps or peanuts that accompany drinks in the UK, but salads, boiled vegetables and– for my compatriots – various fish and meats.(Confession: even I, my curiosity and courage fuelled by the rice wine, had a momentary lapse of vegetarianism recently when I was persuaded to try frog, one of the CHT rainy season delicacies, and which I was told was‘very tasty’. I should add here that I am constantly being told various exotic items are ‘very tasty’, including dried monkey, pigs intestines, fish eggs and tiger (I’m not quite sure I believe said informant was speaking with experience with regards to that last one). In actuality, thefrog was chewy, and mostly tasted like chilli: not bad, but not good enough for my guilt at the poor frog's fate to subside.)The obsession with food extends beyond social settings to office life. When I first arrived, I thought the regular question of‘bhat kheyechen?’ or ‘have you eaten rice/lunch?’ (here, since every meal includes rice, the same word is used for both) following office lunchtimes was a sign of curiosity surrounding my peculiar bideshi eating habits. I have since realised that asking if someone has eaten is also a sign of politeness, as is piling someone else’s plate with food. Even on the busiest of working days, the entire office stops for lunch: a few bring Tupperware of rice and curries into work, the majority go home to their families, resulting in lunch-breaks of a minimum of one hour, and generally more. Work is regularly, and welcomingly, interrupted by various seasonal snacks for us to share: huge, sticky jackfruit for us to plunge our fingers into, plates of fresh mango or pineapple, bowls of homemade olive pickle. And those questions of ‘have you eaten?’ in the post-lunchtime lull continue, joined with moredetailed discussions of exactly how many ‘items’ we have all taken on that particular day.My own contribution to the office eating potluck has, of late, been cakes. Excited at the inheritance of an oven from a previous VSO volunteer, and with a serious longing for breads and other English baked goods, I have taken to regular weekend baking. Given that I like to make cakes more than I actually like to eat them, the vast majority of my experiments end up in the office, where they have resulted in numerous discussions of what exact ingredients are included in these exotic items, and several requests for baking lessons. And it’s not just cakes that take up my weekend time: in a small town, visits to the market, browsing the various items on sale, chats with the sellers about how to cook some of the more unfamiliar items, and the resulting kitchen experiments, are some of the highlights of what’s on offer.Social life, work life, week-end life. It's true: my Bangladesh routine revolves around food.*A note on eggs: I am constantly being fed eggs. Despite living in a Buddhist-majority region, the concept of‘vegetarianism’ is rather rare here, and people get very concerned about what it is I eat if I eat no fish or meat. Hence the eggs: boiled, or in omelette with chilli, and provided especially for me at every work lunch or party. ‘Egg’ was the first word I learned in Chakma, one of the indigenous languages in the CHT, and my egg-eating is the source of ongoing office jokes (eggs are apparently ‘baby-food’, information that is conveyed to me quite regularly. In response I say that since I am the youngest person in the office, I am entitled to eat ‘baby-food’. Both statementsinduce much laughter).