Reinterpretation of Fast Food

Ever since I moved in, I have been excited to write this post. To understand some differences in Nepali culture, it is essential that you know how mealtimes work, and why I dread them.

My neighborhood

Firstly, in Nepal they do not have the breakfast, lunch, and dinner system. Upon waking up each day I am brought hot tea (with enough sugar to rot our iron gate or reduce the Great Pyramids to rubble), and a few biscuits (don’t let the fancy British term fool you, these are like very plain packaged cookies). This is morning snack, and many Nepalis skip this in favor a quick cup of tea on their way out the door.

Around 11am the family sits down to the first dal bhat meal of the day. Dal Bhat is the traditional Nepali meal; the entire country eats it twice a day, everyday. Dal is Nepali for lentil, and bhat means cooked rice. It is exactly as it sounds: a plate with an Everest sized mound of white rice, and a tiny bowl with some soupy-lentil-thing. Next to the rice is always a small mound of spicy curried vegetables - usually potatoes and beans, but on special occasions, spinach or extremely chewy mushrooms. It is quite remarkable when you think about it; this is the only country I have ever seen where the rich and poor, old and young, rural and urban, fat and skinny, all eat the same exact meal two times a day. What a unifying ritual!

I must admit here that the west has spoiled me: we are so accustomed to choices (frequently we’ll whine “but I had Mexican last night!”) that even though I started out loving dal bhat, I am downright sick of it. This is worse than 3^rd grade and the legendary Breyer’s blueberry fruit-on-the-bottom yogurt phase, where I had that everyday for school lunch.

Dal bhat with spinach curry

After our morning dal bhat meal in the kitchen, instead of lunch there is a small “snack” between 2:00-5:00 of homemade ramen noodle soup, which we take in the living room or wherever we happen to be when Ama finishes cooking it. Each time, I am brought my noodles first, and I thank the heavens that we eat this steaming concoction with a spoon. Then around 8:00pm we have our second meal of dal bhat in the kitchen. Shortly after, if we happen to have electricity, we’ll usually squeeze in an episode of India’s Got Talent on youtube before retiring to bed.

Despite the lack of variety, this sounds like a pretty sweet deal, right? Three home-cooked meals where all you have to do is show up, eat, and leave. This privilege (like so many others) exists at the cost of someone else. Ama spends hours each day preparing food; it takes up the majority of her days. Twice a day she makes fresh batches of rice, lentil stew (dal), and fresh vegetable curry all from scratch. And in between she makes noodle soup! Sometimes I wake up around 6:30am to her already chopping the garlic.

Now that I’ve outlined our schedule, let me explain why our mealtimes are causing me to develop stress ulcers. Each meal, when Ama is finished she calls us all into the kitchen and we wash our hands starting with me, then Milan, and so on down the line of familial importance. It is important to wash our hands before and after every meal since we do not use utensils. Then we sit down to the 5 plates that have already been proportioned out for us by Ama.

Ama making sweet roti for Tihar Festival

Ama does not join us at any of the meals since it is tradition that someone, usually the mother, act as the server while the rest of the family eats. Basically her job is to refill our water and our plates - whether we like it or not. And since I am the guest, hospitality dictates that Ama start with me every time, even though my bowl of lentils is half full and my vegetables look like they haven’t been touched; she generously lobs more and more onto my plate with a big toothy grin. Protesting proves futile. Even covering one’s food will only force her to knock your hand out of the way. There is no escaping these refills.

The proper way to eat dal bhat is to cup your right hand (never use your left since they use that in lieu of toilet paper) in the same shape one uses when performing the chicken dance (and a little bit of this and a little bit of that and shake your butt!). First you pour some lentil stew over the rice and then use your cupped right hand to mix in the curried vegetables, tossing the whole thing around with your fingers until well blended into a kind of wet, flavored-rice mixture dotted with the occasional bean or potato wedge. Next you start quickly shoveling this mixture into your mouth in aggressive handfuls. It is nothing like the long leisurely family dinners back home. Nobody speaks. The only sound is the soft slurping of rice. We get in and out of the kitchen in about eleven minutes flat (I actually timed it once).

Meal times are always extremely stressful for me because I haven’t quite mastered the speed (or the quantity) part, so every meal feels like a race against the clock. There is so much food, and they eat it so quickly; I am constantly falling behind and worried that I will throw up before I finish. I sometimes cheat and don’t break up the sticky white rice but shove the whole rice cluster in my mouth to save time from having to break it up and then pick it back up in its soupy dripping liquid form. However, this tactic is sometimes spotted and met with a frown.

Fancy Dashain Festival meal!

As you can imagine, in a third world country such as Nepal, it is considered rude and wasteful to leave rice, or any food, behind. So of course I do my best never to offend. The result is that every meal there is this moment where I look up from my plate, which I’ve been intensely focused on -shoveling rice away and swallowing without even chewing- and I see that the entire family has not only finished their plates, but they have wiped them bare. There is not a single grain of rice or streak of curry sauce left behind. You could put their plates back in the cabinets, or buy them in a department store, and nobody would be able to tell they’d ever been used (I still have no idea how they do this, but my Vavoo who lived through the Great Depression used to do the same thing so I suspect it has to do with personally understanding scarcity).

At this point in the meal I begin to panic; they are all empty-plated and looking at me, waiting. Nobody speaks. They just watch me. At this point the blood starts pumping cortisol through my veins. I kick it into overdrive, swallowing whole clumps of rice and potatoes and breathing solely through my nose. After the mad rush of rice is gone I quickly and victoriously chug my glass of water in one loud gulp and slam it down on the table to finish. Twice a day, everyday.

Once I am done with my meal (I’m sweating from all the food and stress, and my nose is running from all the chili) they all get up. We leave our plates at the table for Siema to wash, and someone turns on the sink and waits for me to jump up and use it first so the others may follow. At this point, I am overcome with relief that I have survived another meal, and all I can think is I need a drink.