“Indian food? Again??!” bawled my kids as the fantastic aroma of rassam, green bean curry, and hot basmati rice infused the house. My youngest, I knew, would still give it a try, but my oldest dived into the freezer to see what he could microwave and consume. Anything but Indian food!
How did this happen?
We are Indian-Americans. My husband and I grew up in India in the 70s and 80s, needless to say, eating Indian food. We occasionally had Chinese( if you want to call it that) for a snack- “Maggi”, the Indian version of Ramen instant noodles that you could heat up in two minutes and add spices (masala) to. There was no concept of Italian or Mexican or Lebanese back then. Or maybe there was. But we, middle class folks, were blissfully unaware that you could even find Italian food in small-town India in the 1980s. Not that we wanted to anyway. With so many options made of delicious carbs and flavors, we had no desire to look beyond! And to top that, my dad had traveled to the United States and Germany during his early career years, and told us stories of attending parties and banquets with his friends with nothing for him to eat, but bread and salad, killing any probable fantasy of glorious foreign food. O yes, forgot to mention, most of my family is vegetarian.
In our house, my husband and I are vegetarian. The kids have been raised as free-foragers, and don’t follow any food restrictions. So you see, we, first generation adults, crave our staples within a few days of abstinence from Indian food- something that becomes most prominent while traveling abroad. Imagine our gastronomical joy when we went to Costa Rica! There was delicious, flavorful rice and delicious, flavorful beans and sautéed vegetables and fried plantains. The reassurance of never having to go to bed hungry for lack of substantial options or having to battle cravings at midnight was blissful.
Fast forward one generation: The Americans. The natural-born Americans to be more precise a.k.a my kids, have no desire in their gut (pun intended) for anything Indian. My oldest has turned into a full-fledged Western carnivore. He is an athlete, and often complains that there is no satisfaction is soupy dishes and spicy curries that are just a party in your mouth and nothing after. My youngest still has some Indian favorites, but wrinkles her nose at anything spicy, sometimes questioning her Indian-ness for her lack of heat-tolerance. I know mine are not the only Indian kids doing acrobatics in the food circus. These days, having an assortment of food options, and having eaten out quite frequently does widen your palette. While I’m glad that my kids can eat all kinds of food, and survive, and not have to get stupidly excited like us oldies that our country of travel eats rice, I cannot help, but feel a twinge of pain in my heart when they don’t really care for their inherited gastronomy.
Was this a sign of their denouncing their Indian-ness? What could be more central to belonging to a certain culture than its food? Maybe they don’t feel an obligation to acknowledge their heritage. Well, I somewhat get it. I don’t feel an obligation to my home state in India because I grew up in a different one. Similarly, perhaps, they don’t feel an obligation to embrace an Indianness that does not appeal to them- whether it’s the scratchy Indian dress clothes, the powdery red tika applied on your forehead during a pooja or worship (that sometimes blinds and burns your eye as it sprinkles down), or the spicy food that often gives you heartburn, or makes you skip dessert because you already went to the bathroom twice. Whatever it maybe, it’s alright. I look at my own upbringing and how thankful I am for it. Growing up in a country as diverse as India with its 22 official languages and hundreds of dialects, a myriad of religions, customs, traditions, and food – all influenced by a rich and varied history of migrants, invaders, and rulers, and particularly, growing up in a state so different from my parents’ home state, I learned to embrace and reject things with equal fervor. There were several ideas and practices I organically inherited by living it and several I rejected inspite of being born into them. My children are such heirs too, only of a wider cultural experience, and in a different country altogether- 10,000 miles away from their parents’. The freedom to enjoy a food in its authentic state, no matter its cultural origins, is pure joy. Anthony Bourdain would agree. And so what if my kids prefer sandwiches and grilled meats and salads to chicken tikka masala, dosa, biryani, or pulao? So what if the spicy saambar turns off their appetite? What will define them is more than their parents’ food or culture. It is their broader outlook of the world they live in that will shape their future and the role they play in it. As long as they can acknowledge their roots and grow a sense of belonging within a community- any uplifting community- it is enough. And they may just do it all while wolfing down a bowl of gooey mac and cheese.
