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EATING WITH YOUR HANDS
Eating with your hands is one of the most intimate relationships you will have with your food.
It is sensual, environmentally friendly, clean and your food even tastes better.
Mixing with different dishes and rice with your fingers makes each mouthful unique culinary experience.
Although many Indians, Bangladeshis, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, Pilipinos, Indonesians and Pakistanis eat with their hands within the privacy of their homes.
However, years of the Raj has made us embarrassed of one of those most personal and intimate habits we have - eating with our hands, especially in public and we are reluctant to use our hands to eat the very food which nourishes our bodies.
Having been brought up partly in an Anglo-Sri Lankan boarding school in Sri Lanka, we were banned from eating with our hands and encouraged to eat with cutlery.
Today, the western world is more accepting of eating different kinds of food with our hands - burgers, chips, pizza, fruit etc. The use of cutlery has reduced dramatically and all too often we eat with just a fork. Not that long ago most people ate Chinese and Japanese food with a fork but now using chop sticks is all the rage. Similarly, it's time we made the jump and start eating rice and curry with our hands too. Drop the shame... Enjoy your food. Share your pics, stories and anecdotes of eating with your hands... be it burgers, rice and curry, fish and chips, dosas or anything else.
Jiva Parthipan
