The Clash of Civilizations...Tandoori Style

           On February 11, 1990—in what seemed an utter impossibility at the time—42 to 1 underdog James “Buster” Douglas vanquished the then undefeated “Iron” Mike Tyson.  In his previous fight, Tyson had dispatched Carl “The Truth” Williams in 93 seconds, and we all knew something was wrong with “Iron” Mike when Douglas made it out of the first round. And the rest is groping for your mouth guard history…

            I remember the fight, or rather my emotional reaction to the fight, vividly. Like just about everyone else in America at that time, I was captivated by the spectacle that is Mike Tyson. I knew next to nothing about the ‘sweet science’ but watched each of his fights with the fervor of a Roman at the Coliseum. I skipped rope, practiced upper cuts, wasted hours playing Nintendo’s Punch Out!, mastered an impression of the fighter’s high pitched lisp, purchased black Reebok high-tops, would’ve had lines carved in my ‘fro had I had a ‘fro. You name it….

Also, February 11^th happens to be my birthday—I turned fifteen. 

But most importantly, my aunt got married that day in a small ceremony attended by only the bride and bridegroom, my grandparents, the groom’s brother and sister-in-law, my parents, my brother, and I. What’s that? Eleven people? I suppose there must’ve been a rabbi or minister of some sort, but I don’t really remember: I just wanted to get to the dang reception—which was going to be held at some fancy French restaurant in Santa Monica called Panache…whatever that meant—so that I could catch Tyson’s inevitable destruction of Buster Douglas. Oh, and one more thing notable about the ceremony: my new uncle, one Chander Oberoi, was Indian, as in East Asian Indian, and my aunt…well, she’s not.

Watercress soup.  Yuck.

            There had been a set menu, which saved us the trouble of having to order, and my father and I stole off to the bar to catch the fight. I returned to the table with a bad taste in my mouth to find that the first course had arrived: watercress soup. The dun fluid inhabited a broad shallow bowl. Outside of the dash of herb (parsely?) splashed in the middle, the soup looked like something Oliver Twist would have turned down.

“What the hell is this?” I asked staring at the bowl.

“Shhhhhhhh!” Hissed my mother. “It’s watercress soup. Just eat it.”

Man oh man, this night wasn’t getting any better. I picked up the spoon and took a sip. Dear God. The soup was cold, and it had less flavor than it had color. It was like pureed water chestnuts or something…only with less flavor than water chestnuts. And wasn’t the chief attraction of the water chestnut it’s crunchy texture?

“It’s cold!”

“It’s supposed to be cold. Quit complaining. There’s more food coming.”

“Yeah. Great. I can’t wait.” Needless to say, the remainder of the food was equally colorless, tasteless, and without texture. I later came to understand the restaurant’s moniker with a significant degree of irony.

Ya see, this was the end of a rather long week for me. I was fifteen and my grandparents were in from out-of-town and I had been forced to do nothing but the very thing that any 15 y/o worth their salt avoids at all costs: spending time with family. Yuck. I mean we’re talking a week straight with the most boring and embarrassing people on the face of the planet. My only companion in suffering was my 13 y/o little brother, Brandon, and he was even less equipped than I to deal with this trauma. His visage had assumed a sort of sublime gaze, a look not unlike the acceptance with which medieval martyrs must’ve ascended the gallows. In short, he was no help. To make matters worse, the GM is sleeping in my bed, the GF is in bro’s, and bro has called dibs on the couch. I’ve been relegated to some sort of pad thingy (which my mother politely refers to as a ‘futon’) on the living room floor. Each morning I wake up to find that I’ve been shoved off said pad by the aging family dog (who’s begun to smell like only an old dog can smell, btw).  But what’s the point of sleeping anyhow?  Ya see, my grandparents have to wake up at like 4:30 in the AM in order to get an early start on their arguing. “Where the hell is the newspaper?!”  “Why’d you make the coffee so strong?!”  “Clean up after yourself!” “Quiet down! Can’t you see people are trying to sleep?!”

Not to worry, during mealtimes, the grandparents are far more pleasant. Apparently, in my family, the patriarch feels that his place is founded on randomly informing his grandchildren that Roosevelt was justified in interning “the Japs” (that’s how the GF routinely referred to Japanese-Americans). “But, grampa, we didn’t intern German-American’s.” He dismissed my logic with a chortle and went back to shoveling potatoes into his mouth. 

Oh! And I had a Cute Little GirlFriend at the time, whom I’d had the opportunity to have over for precisely one (1) family dinner; she was the daughter of a well-off family headed by a judge, an African-American judge. Now at that point I was so utterly excited that a girl deigned to speak to me much less serve as the CLGF, that I could pretty much do nothing except think about her. “So, gramma, did you like, Rachel?” I should’ve known better. She informed me that she didn’t believe in the mixing of races. “But you’re Jewish!” She still didn’t believe in the mixing of races. “But you’re Jewish and grampa isn’t!”

“…”

“And, and, and, when you got married in like the 40s, the Nazi were off killing people…coz they were Jewish!”  She was shocked that I could compare dating “that Black girl” (that’s how she referred to my CLGF) to the horror that her people suffered in the holocaust. “Oh, brother.”

My brother and I circa 1990.

Of course, the GPs’ issue(s) with me was not the real issue, for I, their grandson, was merely dating someone who wasn’t white whereas their daughter was marrying an East Asian Indian.  In short, my grandparents approached this whole matrimonial process more like a normal and sane person would approach a funeral…and they were losing their fucking marbles…and driving the rest of us crazy in the process. My brother shuffled around like a mental patient on Thorazine, my mother exemplified a textbook case of the Stockholm syndrome, and my father had taken to heavy self-medication courtesy of Dr. Jack Daniels. So, as I finished off my cardboard tart at Panache, I’d decided that I’d had it. I was made as hell and I wasn’t going to take it anymore. Besides, the grandparents were going home in just two more days. I pushed the plate away, uttering, “Thank God this ordeal is about done with.”

“Yup,” said my mother. “Just the rehearsal dinner tomorrow and we can go back to our normal lives.”

“The what?”

“The rehearsal dinner?”

“I know I’m no expert when it comes to mating rituals,” I belted forth in a frenetic whine, “but don’t those normally come before the wedding?!”

“Yeah, well, we’ve got to recognize Chander’s family too. Finish your pie.”

*     *     *    *    *

So, the following afternoon, a Sunday, we’re all packed into my father’s Chevy Astrovan which is stuck in traffic along US Interstate-5 en route to some place inland from Compton and Long Beach called Artesia. Nice place. Turns out there’s a ‘Little India’ there, and that’s where Chander’s brother and sister-in-law have a starter-home. The GM, sitting shotgun, keeps harping on my father to slow down; rather than inform her that he’s in stop-and-go traffic and, therefore, not really moving much less driving fast, he just keeps one hand on the wheel and both eyes on the road. The bro and I place an over-under on how long it’ll be before he’ll snap. I take the under. In the van’s middle row, my mother nods at the GF's pontifications as he surveys East L.A. in much the same attitude that W. flew over the Gulf Coast post-Katrina. My brother is no longer capable of audible speech: at this point he mostly just drools.

Eventually we make it into Artesia, and we’re not in the barrio any more, Toto. It’s not like the upper-castes are ridding around on elephants or adolescent boys are hauling rickshaws or anything. But we are clearly in a realm that the GF cannot believe exists in these United States of America. A number of the shops have the word “market” on their deity-spangled signs—as in Taj Mahal Bengali Market or Sanjay’s Madras Market.  The storefronts are adorned with colorful saris and statuettes and hookah-looking-thingies. You can smell the curry spice in the air as the distant notes of sitars float over the hum of automobiles. The heat and dustiness of inland California make Artesia a plausible Hollywood substitute for New Delhi or Bombay…

And it’s becoming readily apparent that the grandparents had thought the worst was over, had thought that the wedding ceremony would prove the nadir of the trip, had thought that nothing could frighten them more than giving their daughter away to a man of another race, but they now find themselves right in the middle of the Other and are suffering full-scale anxiety attacks. My grandfather looks like he’s been drugged and awoken in a strange time and place; he’s Gulliver tethered to the Lilliputian beachhead. My grandmother can no longer even muster the energy to criticize my father’s driving. This is great.

That’s right. I’ve suffered. I’ve slept on the floor next to the elderly, foul-smelling cocker spaniel. I’ve awoken to daybreak arguments about such crucial topics as drinking the last of the grapefruit juice, burning the toast, and stealing the crossword puzzle. I’ve endured my grandfather’s unthinking racist claptrap. I’ve suffered my grandmother’s denigration of my Cute Little GirlFriend. And I have not been permitted to see the CLGF in days, days I say! Any protests on my part have been dismissed with no more than a wave of the hand. They’ve driven my brother and my parents insane, which only leads to further suffering on my part. And then I spent my birthday—my fifteenth birthday!—at a ceremony—a long and boring ceremony!—followed by a hoity-toity meal devoid of all taste and texture. To top it all off my hero—my heretofore undefeatable hero!—lost to a man named “Buster”! Did you hear that?  Buster! So, suffer! Suffer I say. It’s all I have left. I can no longer find joy in anything but the suffering of others. Why stop at Artesia? On to Bombay!

So, we meet up with Chander’s fam at a restaurant called something like Artesia Curry Palace.  All I know is I’m three courses away from being done with these people, after which I can get back to my happenin’ 15 y/o life. We’re seated in the way back and the mood at the long, banquet table is chilly to say the least. But I’ve checked out. I’m a short timer. And once I turn 16 and get my car I’m barely going to see anyone I’m related to ever again so help me god. So bring out the watercress soup or whatever it is you people are going to make me suffer through because in a few short hours you won’t have Aaron Proctor to kick around anymore. I’m at rock bottom and I’ve got nuthin’ to lose. Do your worst! Because I know, Grampa: I know that no matter how much I hate this food, you will hate it more.

I’m at one extreme end of the table and Chander and his brother are huddled with a soft-spoken server at the other extreme end.  I’m certain that the meal they’re ordering is meant as a form of cultural revenge upon the Proctor clan, and I’ve been warned by my mother that I am--under pain of death--required to, not only eat whatever they order, but actually pretend that I like it.  Soon after the conclusion of the confab, we are swarmed by servers dropping successive waves of small dishes, none resembling any food I’ve laid eyes upon heretofore.

Well, that’s not exactly true: the first dish, which Chander calls poppadums, resemble a sheet of tortilla chips that someone forgot to cut up prior to frying.  These poppadums are accompanied by bowls of sauces called chutneys. Even those these chutneys don’t look like any salsa from Tacos Jalisco, the parents set to, comforting themselves verbally with “just like chips and salsa.”  Of course, the grandparents take little comfort in the supposed familiarity of Mexican food. And those chutneys are wonderful. There are mango chutneys and pickled chutneys, and citrus chutneys and spicy chutneys and sweet chutneys. Some are smooth and some are chunky.  Some are red and others are yellow or green. And they all smell of the spice gardens of the world. 

And before I’ve time to come up for air I’m eating fried bits of chicken and cheese and vegetables, but they’re not just fried: they’ve got this infusion of spices which are all subtly different in both taste and smell. And then there are beds of rices, long-grain odoriferous basmati rices which breathe saffron and jasmine. Baskets of bread arrive, naan bread, a clay oven baked flat bread.  They’re covered with butter and garlic and tandoori and have chicken or cheese or vegetables in them.  And I’m ladling gravies—coconut curries, tikka masalas, mahknis, rogan joshes, madras curries, vindaloos, and even a fahl—each spicier than the last, all of which surround more chicken and lamb and cheese and shrimp and nuts and potatoes and peas and lentils. My mouth is on fire, a sublime fire, a fire of ecstasy. And, as I shovel it in like only a 15 y/o boy can shovel it in (and after a week of subsistence on a GP-friendly diet), I suddenly realize that everyone is looking at me.

My mother has a small mound (mostly white rice) in the middle of her plate which she’s been pushing back and forth.  My father and brother have been making faces at their larger heaps.  My grandfather has a single bit of pompadum on his plate and my grandmother has—like Gandhi—refused to eat anything, has thrown all concern for decorum to the wind, has in fact sent her plate away so that her resolve on this issue may not be questioned.  And they’re all looking at me, even the members of East Asian Indian delegation, with uniform blank stares of astonishment.  In retrospect, it seems likely Chander’s family was merely shocked at the sheer amount of food I had ingested whereas my family was coming to grips with the fact that I actually liked this food, this James “Buster” Douglas of world cuisine. I set my fork down and wiped my mouth with a linen napkin.

“Hey, it beats the hell out of watercress soup.”

“…”

“Seriously? You don’t like this?”

“He’s a weird kid,” my grandfather proclaimed.

“Whatever. More for me.”  And I dug back in….