“You eat all food with hand??!!” my friend Pedro asked me recently. The tone of his question was somewhere in between disgust and bewilderment. I assumed he had wanted to clarify the amusing fact for some time when he did ask me the question as it came from nowhere.
It made me smile.
The smile was partially for the school-age me who despised my Indian Amma’s gusto for regularly packing my lunchbox with overflowing curry. As a result, I spent many lunchtimes feeling uneasy and embarrassed of the food, the curry smell, and the way of eating (with hand because Amma forgot to pack a spoon) packed into the lunchbox, which was all too foreign for my Indonesian classmates, teacher, and school. I have long forgiven my Amma for making me feel embarrassed, but more importantly, I have also forgiven myself for feeling ashamed of my own culture in the first place. I was a kid, and it wasn’t hip yet to be exotic back then. Also, if only the young me knew how much the adult me would appreciate having a lunchbox packed with Amma’s home-cooked meal.
Back to my smile at Pedro, I also smiled because the question, peppered with his tone, seemed offensive, but he was one of my closest friends, and we have past judging each other for our beliefs and behaviours.
“Yeah, we eat with hand”, I shrugged, finally answering his question: “it’s pretty normal for us. It’s a part of our culture; it’s as normal as you eating with a spoon“, I told him. He looked at me disapprovingly as if I and the billions of others were wrong here. I thought of explaining more but decided that it was his journey to learn more if he was interested, not mine, to defend my culture to him, at least not on that day.
Follow me on Instagram @KultureKween for more recent updates.
