Daily Times

Oh no, there it goes again; tomato peeking out of my burger is misbehaving and making me look ‘jaahil’ (illiterate). I look around consciously, hoping nobody in the food court has noticed me, and cover my mouth, now splattered with sauce, with a napkin, as I pretend to check notifications on my phone. That the burger may have been assembled in a jiffy by a lazy worker, who may have overloaded on the sauce and cut the veggies a tad too big, holds no real meaning at the moment. The general populace will view it as my fault for chomping at my food in public. In this country we are too conscious of our public behaviour, and are constantly rating people and their social class based also on how they eat. Spilling water accidently on the table, or not being able to carry a heavy fast food tray across the restaurant, all cause social embarrassment, with no margin given to human error.

Eating with one’s hands seems to be forbidden outside the house, hence you may even encounter some people consuming their pizza with a fork and knife in an attempt to appear well brought-up. The rest of the world considers pizza a finger food, but not us, since we are still living under the British Raj in our minds, with a constant need to impress.

Local rice dishes are best savoured with hands, and it’s a thing of tradition too; biryani is not really biryani when eaten with a spoon or fork; meals become more wholesome when they come into contact with the pores on our skin. No wonder then ‘maa ke haath se khana’ (food hand-fed by mother) evokes emotional memory as nothing beats that love that accompanied each niwala (bite). Meals become a sensual experience when our fingers get down to business on the plate, mixing rice with lentils, with some pickle on top. Besides, one can never be too sure of the spoon’s hygiene; the maid may have been silently taking her revenge on you for paying her late last month!

Those living in the Far East haven’t deserted their chopsticks, and South Indians still eat their upma and pongal with their hands even in restaurants. Why are we so apologetic about something that is part of our collective heritage?

Just like western table manners denote class divide for us so does speaking fluent English. Children are packed off to English medium schools with obnoxiously high fees so that he/she can have a better command over the language in order to impress all in our clique. One hardly ever finds people speaking chaste Urdu in five-star hotels or upscale boutiques; we tend to develop lingual amnesia at posh places. Speaking broken Urdu is considered cute and ‘aww’-worthy, but the same can’t be said about anyone wanting to ‘make friendship’ with us on social media.

They say it is very hard to write something that reads easily, but in local schools children are fed the Oxford dictionary, and then they force those words onto their essays. Some of them grow up to write for leading English dailies, and they pay obeisance to their alma mater by needlessly complicating their writing. The focus is on embellishing each sentence with two three ‘big’ words to trick the reader into thinking “haan, yaar, bahut bada writer hai yeh” (yes, buddy, he’s a big writer). This can be mostly observed in English newspapers of Pakistan and India, while The New York Times and Huffington Post have been simplifying their style to appeal to a more global audience.

The print media that produces work in English also tends to look down condescendingly on journalists working in the electronic media but covering pretty much the same stories. The language of intellectuals is English on this side of the planet.

The best abuses are reserved for rickshaw drivers on the roads, while if an SUV bangs into our car we get down to apologising; waiters at the hip dhabas will tell you stories of being robbed of their dignity at the hand of youth that unleashes their frustration on the weak. The same young person will readily get up to offer his chair to a corrupt MLA.

Sadly, no political party wants to address the issue of diminishing moral values, especially the class divide amongst people, and its effect on the mentality of the people and its consequences that snowball later.

And, of course, there is an unhealthy love for ironing the clothes; a little wrinkle on the kurta is bound to kick-start a psychotic rage in the sahab-ji. I am not sure how many citizens actually shower daily but one is only concerned with outwardly appearances here. We must look our class or even better, and that is the predominant thought.

This social uptightness reminds me of an anecdote concerning Mullah Nasruddin, the satirical character from the 13th century Persia known for his pearls of wisdom wrapped in humorous situations. Mullah Nasruddin was once invited to a dinner party; he arrived at the important event wearing his old clothes and shoes. No one noticed him, so he went back to his house, wore his newest coat and headed back to the same venue. This time the host got up to receive him, welcoming him earnestly and even serving him food. Mullah then took off his coat and put it on an empty chair and said, “Eat, coat eat.” The astonished host and guests asked him what he was doing. Mullah retorted that when he first came to the dinner, no one looked at him. It was only after he changed into his best clothes that he was offered food and drink, therefore, the food was for the coat and not for him!

The writer is a freelance columnist with a degree in Cultural Studies and a passion for social observation, especially all things South Asian. She tweets @chainacoffeemug