One Billion Indians

Today would have been tax day, but it fell on a Saturday, so they pushed the due date until Monday. Tomorrow's Easter Sunday. I should have something to say about Easter, but my knowledge of the resurrection is rather limited, so I'll let someone who has more to say about it deal with that.

Instead, I'll talk a little about India.

Recently, some coworkers recommended Madras Palace, which is located in a shopping center near a Giant, near Dogfish Head (I figured it should be Doghead Fish, but apparently not) Brewery, a place I'd also been with coworkers.

Based on its name, I should have realized this was a South Indian place. Most of the people who were eating here were Indian. I was one of two groups that was non-Indian, the other being this white couple. Generally speaking, that's a good sign. I once had a summer job where I worked with a guy named Rob Oddone and another guy named Robert Parrish (no, not the basketball player). Remarkably neither have much of a web presence, though I suspect over 90% of the public lacks one.

Rob grew up in California near San Francisco. When he'd go out with his dad to Chinatown, his dad had a rule of thumb. Pick the restaurant with the most Chinese people. That's probably a good place to go. And they said they never picked a bad spot by following that rule.

I suspect the same can be said of Indian restaurants.

There's a South Indian place near where I live called Udupi Palace. Mostly, South Indian places serve dosas, which are thin crepes that are huge, on the order of a large pizza or larger. Tonight, I saw one woman who had a dosa that seemed to be at least 20 inches in diameter. Inside the dosa, there's usually some combination of potatoes and onions.

In general, I find dosas a bit bland. However, this placed had a "spring dosa" with veggies in it. In particular, carrots and onions, as well as the potatoes. They precut it in thirds, though each third was the size of a burrito. It was hard to eat that much. Thus huge dish was only $6.50.

You can also get uttapam, which is something like a steamed pancake, often with stuff in it. There's also something that resemble a bloated crepe balloon.

South Indian restaurants are typically all-vegetarian, which may be one reason that Americans don't go. As it is, many Americans don't like Indian food, finding it too spicy or too strange or simply not there. Of those who like Indian food, many prefer northern Indian restaurants where they serve meat. India is mostly vegetarian, but there are plenty of people who eat meat. India has a huge Muslim population who eat meat. Some Indians, say Bengalis, eat meat. Bengalis, in particular, like fish.

In general, Hindus won't eat beef, because it comes from cow, and the cow is sacred. However, they'll generally eat chicken, and presumably pork as well. They will eat milk. In fact, quite a lot of Indian desserts are milk-based. Americans (including myself) have found Indian desserts quite sweet. However, it turns out that it's not so much sweet, but milky sweet. The Indians have the same complaint about American desserts. They're too sweet. But really, it's non-milky sweet. The Indians are used to having sweet flavors with milk. Americans, outside of ice cream, are not.

There's a general divide between north and south in India, culturally, and somewhat politically. The major cities of India are: New Delhi, Bombay (now Mumbai), Calcutta (now Kolkata), Hyderbad, Bangalore and Madras (now Chennai). If you picture India as kite shaped (diamond with the top triangle a bit smaller than the larger bottom triangle). Delhi is the furthest north, the closest city to Pakistan and Nepal. Bombay is in the middle left (sorta like San Francisco) right on the coast. Calcutta is on the far right, near Bangladesh. Hyderbad is further south than Bombay in the center. Even further south of Hyderabad is Bangalore. To the east, on the coast, is Madras.

Of the cities, you'd consider Hyderabad, Bangalore, and especially Madras, South India. Delhi is prototypical north. Bombay is considered the "New York" of India (although it's on the west of India). Calcultta is off on the other end (roughly where New York might be were it in India).

The official language of India is Hindi. The religion is Hinduism. People who practice it are called Hindus. However, India has plenty of languages, much like China. In the South, for example, they speak Tamil (in Madras). There's Mayalayam. There's Kahmiri, Punjabi, Gujrati, Bengali, Kannada, Telugu, Marathi. Those in Pakistan typically speak Urdu, which many Indians believe is a purer, more beautiful form of Hindi.

This evening, I ordered: mulligatawny soup, spring dosa, aloo paratha, and mysore coffee. I suspect each, in its own way, wasn't quite authentic. Indians, as a rule, don't really have soups. They do have "gravy", but that's not American gravy. It resembles soup. I believe mulligatawny soup is a bit like hot and sour soup, a kind of soup served to westerners. A little Googling shows this to be true. The British adopted rasam, which is a kind of soup from South India to become mulligatawny soup.

This soup varies a great deal from restaurant to restaurant. It's generally yellow, made of lentils, and may or may not have little bits of meat depending on how vegetarian the restaurant is. Rasam, by contrast, is usually a bit more clear and has tomatoes.

Indians are known for their breads, though it's eaten more in the north than the south. By breads, I should say it's closer to a tortilla than French bread. There is the large puffy baked naan (pronounced "non"). There's poori, which is a bit greasier and flatter. Similarly, there's paratha, which is what I had. Aloo paratha is potato paratha. (Aloo is potato). This is usually a bit greasy too. (I think both are a bit like tortillas, made over a pan with some oil to heat it). Finally, there's chapathi, which is the thinnest of the breads and perhaps the closest cousin to tortillas.

Indians have told me that Indian breads are difficult to make. Most Indians don't usually make their own. Many will use pita for a shortcut.

Those who eat rice usually have basmati rice. This is a long-grained rice. Chinese and Japanese, for instance, prefer short-grained rice. It has a distinctive, though not strong, taste. Texas grows a form of basmati rice called "Texmati" rice, a combination of Texas and Basmati (much like Bollywood is a cross between Bombay and Hollywood).

Indians have a huge film industry reminscent of the American film industry 50 years ago. Asian countries generally have similar film industries, where they crank out one film after another. Most Indians prefer watching rather formulaic films, because they see movies as escapism. They don't (in general) want art or depressing or confusing stories. Most Indian films have a large musical component. There's typically singing and dancing.

Unlike American films where many actors attempt to do their own singing, this is almost unheard of in India. Singing is considered something professionals do. Women tend to sing in an almost childlike falsetto. Singers voices are dubbed over actors lip-synch. In Hong Kong, by contrast, real singers often become actors, and so can really do their own singing.

There's not too much in the way of "art films" in India. The most famous Indian art filmmaker is Satyajit Ray, who passed away a few years ago. There's Mira Nair who's made Indian films but mostly for Western audiences. There's Shekhar Kapur, who made a name for himself with his film Bandit Queen about a real life Phoolan Devi who was kind of a renegade leader. He's since made Elizabeth and Four Feathers. There are Indians in the US making films, mostly M. Night Shyamalan, whose set all his films in the greater Philadelphia area, and to my knowledge, has never made a film starring Indians. Gurinder Chadha made the film Bend it Like Beckham about a Sikh girl who is a soccer star.

Ah, the Sikhs. Most people think of Indians wearing turbans. However, only the Sikhs wear turbans. They are a minority religion, that is monotheistic. Its originated in the 1500s. Sikhs (also called "surds" or "surdarjee") follow the five "K"s. These are (from Wikipedia): Kesh (uncut hair), Kanga (small comb), Kara (circular heavy metal bracelet), Kirpan (ceremonial dagger), and Kacha (long underwear).

Many Sikhs have the last name Singh and often have a first name that ends in "inder" as in "Surinder". You'll notice the female director of Bend It Like Beckham is Gurinder.

Although Indians have been perceived as a third world country, they took an unusual policy to educate their people. Rather than attempt for universal education, they decided to educate an elite. Those who can succeed in education are sent to elite schools, many conducted in English.

The top Indian univerities are the I.I.T's, the Indian Institute of Technology. To get in, you must take an exam that over a hundred thousand students take each year. Only a few thousand students qualify to enter one of the five IITs. (Upon further checking, there are seven IITs now, two of them added in the 90s). They are located in Dehli, Bombay, Kanpur, Kharagpur, and Madras. The last two are Guwahati and Roorkee.

These exams are not like the SATs. The questions are truly challenging. Your admittance is based solely on the exam, except for a few minorities who are allotted a fixed quota of students.

The IITs are based on American schools in that they have frequent exams. Other universities in India are more like the British system, which have one large final exam at the end of a semester. IITs generally require a large number of courses. Six or seven courses is not uncommon. Computer scientists often have to take a few courses in electrical engineering, for example.

The IITs rank their majors. At one point, computer science was the top major and electrical engineering was number two. This is probably still the case. Each student picks their major before entering with those having high rank picking their major first. Students from IITs are generally quite bright and outgoing. They are often quick thinking and vocal in their questions, unlike, say students from Asia (China, Korea, etc) where students are usually very quiet, and don't ask much, if at all, in class.

Many graduates of IIT head to the United States to further their education. The brain drain is noticeable. Ask a typical Indian who has come to the U.S. if they plan to head back to India when they graduate, and many will say yes, but often find themselves, years later, still in the United States, since the opportunities are better. Even so, there's been talent heading back to India.

Outsourcing has headed to India where well-educated Indians work at a fraction of the cost that their Western counterparts do because of the vast difference in the cost of living. Added to that, Indians often speak very good English, at least, those that are well-educated, a side-effect of the British occupation.

There are other universites besides IIT. There's BITS, the Birla Institute of Technology and Science. The Birlas are a wealthy family in India who've funded education. There's also IIS, which is the Indian Institute of Science.

Although India has long been independent, there are many Indians, especially educated Indians that are Anglophiles. Many educated Indians are voracious readers, and read British literature. Ironically, South Indians, who often dislike Hindi as the official language (it's a northern language), prefer English, which is seen as suitably neutral. Some Indians have refused to learn Hindi, especially in the south.

Indians have find Chinese cooking funny. Indians cook with a variety of spices, in fact so many that the best place to get cheap spices is an Indian store. Here is a partial list of spices and their translations: cumin (jeera), tumeric (haldi), chili, mustard seeds, asafetida (hing), fennel (sounf), fenugreek (methi), green cardamom (elaichi), black cardamom, cinnamon (dalchini). There's even more than that.

There is no such thing as curry. Instead, it's a combination of spices. Indians generally have masalas, with garam masala, the most famous of these spice mixtures. Typically, they are made by heating the spices and grinding them. They are very fragrant, so if you want to cook Indian, realize the smell can hang around a bit.

On the other hand, Chinese cook with sauces. Soy sauce, chili sauce, plum sauce, and on and on. Indians find sauces a bit inauthentic, but there's really no way to do Chinese cooking otherwise.

Interestingly enough, Indians often use many of the same ingredients to cook as Chinese cuisine, including ginger, garlic, and bitter melon, even though the resulting taste is quite different. Both cultures eat a lot of rice, though Indians typically use their hands, while the Chinese use chopsticks.

When Indians eat, they eat with their right hand. Like Africans, the left hand is perceived as unclean (think of toilet habits), and not meant for eating. The right hand therefore serves to rip and scoop. If you're eating bread, you must hold and rip the bread, then mix it, and eat with the finger tips. Food can also be mixed in this fashion with rice. Indians who eat Western food, however, tend to use fork and spoon, again, most likely leftover from British influence.

A relatively common Indian food is dal, which is lentils of a sort. There are several kinds of dal. Normally, you boil dal to cook it. However, dal can take a very long time to boil to softness, up to an hour. Many Indians use pressure cookers to cut down the cooking time to only a few minutes. The two most commonly eaten dals are toor dal and masoor dal (I can't really say that, but those are the two I've seen). Technically, dals are pulses, but I couldn't even begin to tell you what that means.

Well, there you go. I could probably write a few more pages on what I know about India, but I'm already getting tired.

In the meanwhile, bon appetit.