Why Does Eating With Our Hands In Public Make Us So Uncomfortable?

It was a cold tuesday night in Washington, D.C. and I was sitting in the comfort of my dormitory kitchen with a plate of steaming self-made rajma chawal in front of me - the ultimate comfort food. I portioned out a core of rice with just the right amount of rajma, and gave it the customary mix and swirl with my thumb and last three fingers sensing how hot it was. Before I even thought about whether it was cool enough or not, my thumb intuitively pushed the bite into my mouth. No sooner had I begun to make my second bite than I heard a voice cry out “Are you kidding me?! Is the dishwater broken again? Why is there no clean cutlery?”

“The dishwasher is fine, there are some spoons in the drawer if you need” I responded in between bites.

“So why aren’t you using one? That’s rice and curry, isn’t it?” she inquired.

“Oh, I just like eating with my hands” I replied.

–-

I’ll leave it to your imagination to conjure up the look of disdain and confusion my statement seemed to induce. Was it because I used my hands on the Indian equivalent of a Chipotle burrito bowl best eaten with the underlying taste of cold, shiny plastic? Was it only okay to use my unwashed hands when eating Pizza or a burger or ribs? Was I only supposed to eat indian food with my hands when I was home and cutlery when I was out? My eating habits began to feel like a dirty little secret, one I didn’t want to keep.

As a child, I had a fair share of global cuisine on the table, but Indian food was a mainstay. Growing up in Bangalore as an honorary south Indian meant that my mother taught me how to eat just about anything with my hands. While others were putting their dexterity to test with the fork and knife (let me clarify that I went on to somewhat acquire this skill, albeit a little late) I was training my nimble fingers in the art of eating. I mean, how does anyone eat a bony fish on a banana leaf with cutlery? The mark of a clean eater was messy fingertips and a clean palm. There was no licking of rasam, elbow up, despite general public opinion. It was fine eating, where not a morsel of food went to waste. It was also the easiest way to slow down my eating process - to take time to chew, taste, and savour the inner workings of my palate. As far as I can remember, I would wait for Sundays to arrive (Sundays are synonymous with biryani in my family) just to see if I could draw out the marrow from the mutton with the same elegance as my mother. There has never been a more precise marrow extractor, no amount of equipment can do her style any justice. I dare anyone to compete.

It seemed, however, that biryani was meant to be enjoyed that way only in the sanctity of my home. Sitting across from an accidental boyfriend at Nagarjuna, with a plate of Chicken Biryani Full in between us, I did what all biryani eaters do - served myself the best chicken piece, piled on the rice and raita - stopping only to savour the taste at my fingertips. Who talks when they’re eating biryani, anyway? I looked up as I was done only to see that he was staring at me without having taken a bite. “I’ve never seen a girl eat like that” he whispered. I paused for a second to ponder what he meant - was eating biryani with reckless abandon suddenly a ‘guy thing’? Till date, I’m not sure how he meant it. I went on to serve myself the last of the biryani - the relationship didn’t work out.

In a New York Times article, Mrs. Julie Sahni, a cookbook author and teacher, remembers “an Indian restaurant in Manhattan that, in the 1970s, had unofficial sections for Indians and non-Indians.” She told NYT the owners explained that Indians didn’t want non-Indians to see them eating with their hands and that Westerners didn’t want to see it, either. She goes on to say “Eating with the hands evokes great emotion. It kindles something very warm and gentle and caressing. Using a fork is unthinkable in traditional Indian eating. It is almost like a weapon.” You’d think this was somewhat understandable for New York in the 70’s, but what of Singapore in 2017?

Shrishti Sugla tells us of an instance where she and her family went to an Indian restaurant in Singapore, and her father chose to eat his meal with his hands. “A few minutes later the waiter came over to our table and requested him to eat his rice and dal with a spoon. All the people around us in the restaurant kept staring at us, as if we were aliens. A few people frowned and did their level best for trying to make us feel bad for our food habits,” she says. How do you get away with adopting a cuisine, but not the culture and tradition associated with it

But all these stories are ones away from India, so where’s the relevance you ask? Drifting back to home ground, we hear a tale of a young girl who felt the same joyful abandon as I did when she would eat with her hands. A junglee at heart and hand, Mandovi Menon had no reason to shrink away from the fact that her hands were her preferred choice when it came to feeding herself. “Just don’t be so messy,” her mother would request, and to the best of her ability - she tried. One of her reasons for having friends in school was so that she could go to their homes and eat their food. At one such friend’s house, she took her place at the dining table ready to get elbow deep into the food she’d been only too eager for. Only then did she notice 3 types of forks guarding the left of her plate, 3 kinds of knifes on the right and the front wall of the plate blocked by two spoons - an army of cutlery. A six course Indian meal followed, each course brought in and served to every person on the table - the gallant cutlery bustling to life all around her. Needless to say, she didn’t eat very much that night, and most definitely not with her hands.

Was the embarrassment of eating with our hands so ingrained in our psyche that we couldn’t allow ourselves to eat with our hands at home, let alone in public? I mean, it’s not like anyone’s asking you to eat spaghetti with your hands or use the blade of your palm to cut a cake (props to you if you’ve done this). This is indian food we’re talking about, straight outta bartan. Today, there are a few Indian restaurants that are trailblazers in that they have chosen to go ‘back to the future’. Hemant Mathur’s michelin-starred restaurant in Midtown Manhattan, Tulsi, serves up traditional Indian fare and encourages patrons to use their hands and really get into the food. The chef, Eric McCarthy says “reactions from the guests range from momentary pause to immediate pleasure at the permission to act so informally in such a sophisticated restaurant.” Anjli Vyas Lodhia’s Indian pop-up restaurant in London hopes to question how the way we eat changes with our environment, as she encourages sharing bowls and completely immersing yourself. ITC’s Royal Afghan in Bangalore serves up kebabs, naan and kaali dal without a fork in sight.

The tools with which one handles food is as integral to the meal as the ingredients themselves - it stands to change just about everything. To me, eating with my hands is not just a glorified “experience” that comes paired with Indian food. It’s just the way it’s done. Eating is an act of survival, an act that remains immune to a change in public or private space. Maybe it’s the primal caveman instinct within me rejoicing at it’s brief liberation, or maybe it’s just the muscle memory of my fingers refusing to give way - whose to say. For better or worse, I prefer to eat my mutton biryani, marrow and all, the way the good lord intended for it to be eaten.

Illustrations by Karan Kumar