A few years ago my dear friends Charles and Peter and I took a trip to Oaxaca, Mexico for the Dia de los Muertos holiday. I'm not sure if I looked malnourished, but it seemed that everywhere we went, people gave me food: an old lady on the bus shared her tamales with me, a man at a sandwich stand let me have a bit of his sandwich, etc. Peter still teases me about it to this day, and he asked us to keep track of the handouts I got here in India.
Well, Peter, the feedings haven't occurred as profusely as in Mexico, but here's the rundown. I've had quite a few glasses of chai handed to me, but those most often happened when I was in someone's shop and they wanted me to stay a bit longer. Last Wednesday, while David and I sat at a roadside stand in Ajmer (Rajasthan), in the middle of a duststorm, awaiting our long-overdue sleeper bus to Agra, some men sat down at our table with a pile of namkin on a sheet of newspaper and offered us some. (Namkin is a salty, spicy snack made up of little bits of stuff like puffed rice, peanuts, and what looks like the crunchy Chinese noodles that come in a can in the States; it can be bought prepackaged, or fresh from a roadside vendor, who may also add diced onion and tomato and a little lime juice.) On a side note, we discovered that night that "sleeper bus" does not equal "sleeper train" -- what a bumpy, grimy experience!
But on the food front, the highlight so far was last night. We were at the Jhansi train station, awaiting our train to Varanasi. We'd just spent a few lovely days in a peaceful riverside town called Orchaa. David went off to get a bite to eat and to bring me back a little rice (my stomach's a bit off--again!), and a girl slipped into his empty seat and told me she would like to speak English with me. She was so adorable: a very smart, grown-up sounding 11-year-old with plans of working for the Foreign Office when she grows up. She was on her way to Pune with her parents to visit her older brother. She told me, "We saw you, and we were talking about how you had a kind face, and perhaps you wouldn't mind speaking with me." We discussed the places I'd visited and she told me about her favorite places in India. It was such a sweet experience.
When David returned, she scurried off to her seat. David dropped off my rice, packaged in a blue plastic bag, and went off again to check on the status of our train. I was really hungry. I reached in the bag, scooped a handful of rice into my mouth, and nearly spit it out because it had magically taken on the plastic flavor of the bag. Then I noticed a fat bug in the rice, and decided to pitch the whole thing. As I sat there comtemplating my options (maybe I had a Luna bar in my bag?), the girl reappeared bearing a silver plate filled with namkin and little fried dumplings! It was delish. Unfortunately, just as I started to dig in, she told me her train had arrived and she needed to go. "And please, if it's not too much trouble, may I have my plate back?" I emptied the plate into a spare baggie, handed the plate back to her, and in the blink of an eye she was out the door, pulling her little rolling suitcase behind her. I didn't get a chance to say goodbye, and I don't remember her name!
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