the amusing mash-up that was my Persian (?) dinner

Above picture: The place it all went down

Every night I try to choose a new restaurant to eat at. Since, Indians like their Indian food and there is plenty of variety within Indian foods, there are not too many non-Indian restaurants around Bangalore. This means that I eat Indian foods at least 99% of the time. By all means this is not a bad thing. Indian food is wonderful and I am really going to miss it. I am scared to think what food back home is going to taste like after I’ve gotten accustomed to such strong, pungent, spicy and hot food, breakfast, lunch and dinner.

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Here in India they do everything very Indian-like. I am going to go ahead and say that it is definitely the most distinct culture in the world. You might see what Indians call “Western” influence here and there, but it always some sort of Indian twist. I find the complete Indian-ness to be very amusing. I walk through the city streets at night and constantly remarking to myself, “Wow, that is so Indian.”

All this Indian-ness makes anything non-Indian wildly hilarious to me. When I come across something non-Indian, its non-Indian-ness is magnified to extreme size for me.

Let me share a situation with you. Warning: It’s long but good.

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The other night I was walking down one of Bangalore’s more commercial streets, Church Street, where they have one great restaurant after another. As I walked along I came across a Persian restaurant. I don’t think I have ever been to a Persian restaurant so I decided to check it out. The outside displays professed “Persian Bites” and “Persian Kebabs”, which both sounded great, even with me being such a staunch vegetarian.

Who can say that they had their first Persian food experience in India, right?

So, I walked in and the mash-up began.

All the servers and cooks appeared to be Nepalese/Chinese. One of the Nepalese guys brought me a menu. As the outside displays claimed they had plenty of Persian bites and kebabs to choose from. They also had a burger and pizza section that spanned twice that of the Persian section.

After seeing the enormous burger and pizza section I decided to take a quick scan of what the other patrons were eating. They all seemed to be eating burgers. And the burgers looked of In-and-Out quality.

I decided to follow the trend and choose something from the burger section. In the burger section, I came across a “veggie” burger and decided to go for it.

As I waited for my veggie burger I spotted an Arabic/Midde Eastern family eating some burgers. They caught my eye (a) because they weren’t Indian and (b) because their daughter was extremely beautiful. Because of both (a) and (b), but mostly (b), I found myself observing the family. The grandmother, mother, and daughter were all wearing traditional clothing with cloth over their heads and the two sons were both wearing Diesel.

I found this mash-up of the woman wearing traditional and the male wearing modern, fashionable clothes to be quite common among Indian couples.

My veggie burger came and it was probably one of the best veggie burgers I have ever had. This is coming from a life-long Adventist who has had many delicious, homemade veggie burgers.

As I ate my veggie burger I watched the Nepalese/Chinese servers, observed the Arabic family and listened to the music playing in the restaurant.

The music that played kept switching between Indian pop and random American pop from the past and present.

I felt weird eating my veggie burger in a Persian restaurant while Shania Twain played over the speakers. It was even weirder when Mercy Me’s “I Can Only Imagine” started playing.

To top it all off, just as I was finishing my burger, three very obese Indian teenagers busted through the restaurant’s doors wearing shorts. The largest of the three went up to the host’s counter and barked loudly, “Do ya got any sweets?!” The host and all of us patrons were taken back by the guy’s abruptness. We were even more taken back by his hilarious-because-he-was-so-overweight inquiry.

You do not see many obese individuals here in India and you see almost zero people wearing shorts, except for tourists.

As soon as the situation unfolded I knew that it was going to be bad. I tried my best to stifle my laughter. I was successful at first because none of my friends from back home were with me (that would’ve been lethal). But, my success quickly turned to failure as I looked over at the two Arabic guys and one of them gave me a that-was-hilarious look. I reciprocated the acknowledgment of the hilarity and then soon found myself jamming the last of my burger into my mouth to stop the laughter.

The restaurant’s host politely informed the young men that they didn’t have any sweets but that they had a great burger section.

Lesson of the day: Non-Indian-ness is pretty amusing in a very “Indian” India