An NRI’s Diet in India

You can take the Indian out of America but you can’t take the American out of the Indian.  Does that sound weird to you?  Well, that’s what happened yesterday evening as I was talking to my Mom.

Last year, I tried to get my mom to use less salt and oil in her cooking.  She quickly brushed me off.  A good deal of it had to do with the fact that my masi and her kids were big on me not eating enough sweets, etc.  So, of course, my mom jumped on that bandwagon as well instead of listening to what I was saying, which was the general result with most of my discussions with her (i.e., hear son talk, listen to sister’s family comment, follow sister’s family’s commentary, forget what son said).

This whole thing started changing recently when I came across a great little tool to use.  I’m not that conniving actually to use it purposefully, it just so happens to have happened twice now.  Twice now, a family member from my dad’s side (bhua and chacha) were in town.  I casually mentioned to them something that my mom wasn’t doing that I wanted.  Once it was in front of my mom and once when I was hanging out my chacha and his family.  When this happened, my mom’s listening ability to her son’s (i.e., my) commentary went up exponentially.  Isn’t that interesting?  My mom would not listen to me, in fact, fight me on anything I asked/wished for, until external family members (i.e., dad’s side) happened to be part of the conversation.  Weird shit.

Anyway, so in talking to my mom yesterday, a conversation that piggy-backed off a comment I made to my chacha that clearly got conveyed to my mom, I asked her to start using butter without cholesterol.  I would have asked her last year if she wasn’t giving me such a hard time.  She readily agreed.  I then mentioned it would be great to use less salt and less sugar as well and find substitutes for each.  She readily agreed to that too, which was directly contradictory to her response when I repeatedly requested the same a few months ago.  Anyway, I was sort of on a roll.  She then suggested having salad – ooooh, I love salad.  I’ve loved it since college when I would end up at the local Denny’s studying till early morning or pulling an all-nighter.  I would order some veg food, usually a veg sandwich and fries, and get the salad that would come with it at a discounted rate.  I really really liked that very inexpensive salad at Denny’s.  Since then I’ve been hooked.  So when my mom said “salad”, I jumped all over it.  I gave her suggestions on what to put in it – cucumbers, tomatoes, garbanzo beans, corn, peas, those reddish beans, what do you call them, and a few other things I can’t remember now.  So she’s going to get this all set up now it looks like.

In other words, me, an NRI in India, has recently gotten salad American style (my mom likes to put apples in them too, which just doesn’t work for me) and has gotten an old high school friend to send him cereal from the US.  Yes, sir, I am supposed to be getting a shipment of Cap’n Crunch and Lucky Charms.  Actually, I had posted an innocent remark about wanting someone to export/import cereal to India and she said she’d send me some!  Around those days, I was craving Taco Bell.  (I know, I know, real classy stuff I eat – Denny’s salad, cereal, and TB.  Well, whatever!  I like these foods and I intend to continue eating them.  Actually, I have two quirks about food.  First, I like simplicity in the food I eat.  Give me the basics and I’m a happy camper.  Second, if the cooked food looks weird, I will not eat it!  That’s right, it has to “look” edible, not “taste” edible.  I don’t know where I got that one from.)  So I asked my friend to make a trip to TB and get me some hot sauce hot sauce (i.e., not mild hot sauce).  She sent the packet about a week ago.  I should be getting it any day now.  How about that!!  Girls are the best, seriously.  They’ll do things for friends that guys would never do.  That’s another post for another time.  For now, enjoy your food as I enjoy my American-style salad (and cereal) in New Delhi!