Vegetarian woes in a foreign land

’Enough!’ I wanted to scream out loud.

But the words just stuck to my throat. Maybe it was the gooey, gelatinous concoction that kept it there — the over-sugary, dull-as-ditchwater thing that they called coffee! A teardrop almost made its way to the corner of my eye. But I sniffled it away. I must not cry. Not in the neighborhood Starbucks. Not before all these firangs!

So I bravely ate the last of my croissant (I’ll never learn how to correctly pronounce that word!) poured down some more of that ‘coffee’ and tossed in a glass of plain old water for good measure. The whole thing ran down my gullet and landed in my stomach with a thump. A most dis-satisfying thump I might add.

I’d been in America — the land of opportunity, as they called it — for all of five days. But already, the food (or the un-palatability of it) was beginning to make me pine for home. I can’t remember how many times I thought about mom’s cooking in these five days. I dreamt about it. I salivated in my dreams. I even pulled out a photograph of me sitting at the dining table back home, licking-off sambar from my elbow and pasted it on my wall in a fit of nostalgia, and craving.

Don’t get me wrong. It’s not that I’m a stranger to Mc Donalds, Wimpys and Burger King. I’ve had my fair share of those joints even back home in India. But then, how long can one survive on such ‘junk food’? And that too in a foreign land, when the smallest health issue could prove debilitatingly expensive. At some point one has to get back to the real thing. Like delicious sambar rice, delectable bhindi fry and dependable avakkai pickle. Slurp! Some of this heavenly fare would always be waiting for me when I got home from college. And I would tuck-in till my belly got full and then lie around. Happy and content with the world. But I’m digressing.

You see, I belong to that breed of Indian males who have never entered the kitchen, except by accident. Mom or some female relative was always the person to cook for dad and me. And on the few occasions when we ate out, none of us had to bother beyond ordering from the menu. And when I went to my friends place, my friends’ mothers cooked. It was as simple as that. In all my 21 years in India, I had never been confronted with the need to cook. So, I simply did not know how to!

And I guess I needed to come to the US of A to pay the price. My Indian origins seemed to be conspiring against me. I couldn’t eat meat because I’d always been a vegetarian. Vegetarian food was harder to find than Osama Bin Laden. And even if found, were so expensive, that my automatically convert-to-rupees brain went into a state of shock. So there I was stuck in the land of opportunity, with no means of feeding myself! I simply couldn’t digest the fact!

All these thoughts came whirring back at me as I stepped out of Starbucks. I firmly resolved to do something about it. I had to! Else, I would methodically starve to death. So I got back to my apartment (I was staying alone at present. Two others would be joining me in a week) and arming myself with a guide book and some money, stepped out to seek, bring home, cook and consume.

Almost four hours later, I staggered back, dejected and defeated. I had found nothing. But had discovered a lot of inane things. For instance, never have I been astounded by the range and variety of canned food available. So many shapes, colors and sizes that the mind just reels upon viewing them. Oh! None of them are of any use to me because they all contain slaughtered animals or animal parts. Those that claim not to look suspiciously like they do, and I decided to leave them alone.

Vegetables exist, but none of them seem to be the ones I had seen back home. There is this vegetable that looks like the capsicum, is shaped like the capsicum and even smells like the capsicum. But the helpful grocer insisted on calling it ‘peppers’. Then there’s bread. Whole wheat, white, brown, French… name it and you’ve got it. But seeing all this bread reminded me of the burgers I had been eating. So I moved on.

I saw preserved food (no. They all have monosodium glutamate), a wide range of ready-to-eat snacks (no way. All genetically modified) and even un-heard of chain stores selling all kinds of prepared food (not a chance. All non-vegetarian, mostly beef.) Even the shakes, coffees and smoothies seemed to be made out of all kinds of animal produce! And the Chinese food was like nothing I had ever seen in the myriad Chinese restaurants and pushcarts back home.

So on and on I walked, unable to find even a simple roti or chapatti stall. Nobody in India had warned me about this fate. In fact, all of them went on and on about the thousands of Indian Software professionals here and how Indians had become the third most powerful ethnic group in the US. Indeed! So powerful that their cuisine was nowhere on the map! Or maybe I was unfortunate enough to land in a place populated only by rednecks, African-Americans, Chinese and Hispanics! None of whom had even heard of India.

Morosely, I made my way back to the apartment. And famished, dirty and tired, I crashed onto my bed. I seemed to have reached rock bottom in my quest for palatable food. And there seemed to be no hope, not even a glimmer. As pain from all that walking and tiredness from the futility of my quest began to set in, my eyes wandered towards an Ad in the newspaper. An irritatingly happy Ronald McDonald grinned up at me. And right next to him was the biggest, juiciest veggie bean burger, fries and coke I had ever seen. A big, blazing phone number and message beside it urged me to call. The digits glowing in the mellow light of the golden arches.

My resolve made a feeble attempt to rise and remind me of my afternoon oath. But I pushed it aside and grabbed the nearest phone to punch in the numbers. What can I say? A hungry man has got to do what a hungry man has got to do!