lunch in kochi

today we went to a local restaurant and had thali. first they laid down a banana leaf and then put a mountain of rice on it. it was followed by five or six different sauces ladled from cans the waiter carried around. two addition small cups were laid on the table for each of us; one of them was curd and the other a dessert. the curd I put on the rice immediately and it was tasty, i then, unknowing poured half the dessert on the rice as well which you are suppose to drink straight from the cup. the surprised waiter said: "no, no, sweets, that is sweets." oh well, i am learning quickly. i suppose that's like putting ice cream on steak. 

then there  was the problem of getting the food to my mouth with just my hands. it was rice and a bunch of runny sauces, so i began mixing them all together. not quite the way to do it, but it was successful. i am not sure if the people were staring at me because i was white or because i was mixing my food. my aim was to mix the main sauce with the rice and one other sauce at a time, but i ended up mixing in more. the real trick is getting the rice and sauce to the right consistency when it does not drip from your hand or fall apart on the way to your mouth. using your fingertips you grab and scoop a little bit at a time.

next time i will definitely make a pool of the main sauce in the middle of my rice and then mix smaller amount at a time rather than my entire dish at once. the walk back to the hotel was really hot. along the way we found a lost baby goat which was heart wrenching, it just kept running and calling out for its mom. we also stopped at a fruit stand and got 4 bananas. the man weighed them and held up two fingers which i interpreted as 20 rupees; only when we were back at our hotel did i realize it was probably 2 rupees. 50 cents for 4 bananas would be a lot in india, but if it was 20 rupees it would probably be the white-guy-charge, a very common charge here.