Monsoon Diary Quotes

“Indians expect to be
force-fed when they visit other homes, and they relish the attention. In fact,
Indians of my grandmother’s generation think it rude and walk away in a huff if
the host doesn’t entreat them to eat, eat, and eat some more.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“My contention is that cooks who add foreign ingredients to chutneys
do so to hide their own ineptitude.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“The customs officers will never let us enter America carrying all her
powders. I haven’t been sleeping at night thinking of all that could happen. And
your mother blithely keeps packing away.”
Mom was equally irritable on the other line. “What can these customs people
do?” she asked. “If they ask what it is, I will tell them that I am carrying Indian
medicines.”
“Ha!” said Dad. “Indian medicines indeed. They will throw everything into
the trash can.”
“Let them throw,” Mom said. “It will reduce my load. Why can’t you think of
your poor daughter instead of those prying customs officers?”
“What if those prying customs officers jail us indefinitely when we transit
through London? What if they deport us back to India? What if they think we’re
terrorists because of my moustache?”
My parents fought all the way across the Atlantic and arrived without any of
the powders, pickles, papads, and sweets. The customs people at Kennedy
Airport had tossed them all”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“Indian cooking—indeed, any
cooking—is mostly about getting the proportions right”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“Sometimes, predictability and tradition please
expectant guests rather than erratic invention and experiments that could fail.
ALL INDIAN WEDDINGS HAVE several things in common: noise, food,
music, and color. This is why Indians who live in America or any other part of
the world go back home to get married. It would be hard to duplicate the color
and happy chaos that surrounds an Indian wedding anywhere else in the world.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“I had half hoped that he would be so swayed by my charms that he would propose
to me on the spot—even though I had no intention of accepting”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“Suddenly, it became very important that he like me, more for my pride than anything else. If anyone was doing the rejecting, I wanted it to be me”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“they didn’t forever compare India with America and find both countries lacking in some way”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“I was stuck, trapped in affection, smothered by love. As Shyam said, I was leading the life of “your average, nice Indian girl.” I didn’t want to be nice. I wanted to shake the world.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“They sat around the dining table looking innocuous as they awaited my chilled
avocado soup. The mango-cilantro salsa made a colorful garnish. But when I
brought it out to the table, Todd, the painter, said he was allergic to mangoes,
and Carlos from Guadalajara hated cilantro. How could a Mexican hate cilantro,
I thought as I spooned out the garnish from Carlos’s bowl. Margo, the
macrobiotic, wouldn’t eat avocado since it wasn’t native to the Northeast, and
Robert, the banker on the Pritikin diet, was banned from eating it because it was
high in fat.
Things got progressively worse. Niloufer, the daughter of a Turkish diplomat,
took one look at my dolma and said, “That doesn’t look like the ones my
grandmother made.” Reza, the Iranian consultant, announced that he wouldn’t
eat Turkish food, since his ancestors were murdered by Turks. Todd, I
discovered, was allergic not only to mangoes but also to cabbage. He was the
only one in the group who touched my umeboshi-cranberry sauce, which the
entire group pronounced inedible. Olivia, my fashionable Italian friend, stated
that she “simply couldn’t” eat the pine nuts that I had liberally included in my
dolma stuffing, and spent the entire meal scratching her plate to spot and discard
the offenders.
With each dish, I had to recite its ingredients in excruciating detail and answer
questions—had I used stone-ground flour? Was the produce organic (it wasn’t)?
—all of which determined who would deign to eat my delicacies.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“Art students didn’t care whether I was from India or Botswana; they cared about
Van Gogh, Gauguin, and the meaning of life. They didn’t see me as a brown-
skinned foreigner; they spotted raw sienna, burnt umber, and cadmium yellow
shades on my face. They didn’t stereotype me because my parents were Hindu
and vegetarian; they reminded me not to blow up the studio while welding and
cutting”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“I didn’t mind answering that I was from India, but I disliked the way India became the sole
topic of conversation after that. Some international students loved talking about
their countries. I didn’t. I didn’t care for the caste system, I didn’t know enough
to talk about Indian politics, I resented having to defend my country’s poverty,
and I was insulted when people asked if Indians rode on elephants. Over time I
grew to hate the well-meaning friendly question “Where are you from?”
As long as I was in small-town America, I realized, I was no longer just a
person. I was a representative of my country. It was a daunting realization and an
enormous burden.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“I
learned that when people greeted me by saying, “Hi! How are you?” the correct
response was not to elaborate on how I actually felt but to toss it right back at
them with a “Fine. How are you?”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“KIDS. That’s what it eventually boiled down to. My parents’ objections, my
grandparents’ fears, Shyam’s lectures all had to do with one thing. Two things,
actually. Marriage and kids”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“We were cousins united by blood but separated
by language”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“Even the most timid maami will become a daring smuggler when it
comes to carrying curry plants across borders.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“He had also
—in a masterstroke of marketing—recently given his cows English names, since
his best customers were an American family deployed to the local embassy. So
Kamala had become Coffee, Gomu had become Gaby, and Shanti had become
Tiger”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“Whenever a Catholic priest arrived from
abroad, the sisters went into missionary overdrive, converting the neighborhood
poor to Christianity with offers of clothes, food, books, and money. Our Maari
was one of the many who lined up outside the church, tempted by the pristine
white garments that the sisters handed out and the envelopes of cash that she
needed so badly. But she always reverted back to Hinduism after a few days,
preferring her dime-sized bindi and colorful saris to the Spartan clothes of newly
converted Christians. Apparently, her Christianity commanded a higher price
than the sisters could afford.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“In all her interactions with me, my grandmother presented herself with
ruthless honesty, almost in spite of herself. In this age of political correctness
when most people are afraid to voice their opinions and are guarded even with
family, Nalla-ma stood out as someone who revealed herself completely, warts
and all. What greater gift could she have given to the all-absorbing mind of her
first grandchild?”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“Indians of my
parents’ and grandparents’ generation never sipped—they thought it unsanitary
to be spreading germs by sipping cups, even if the dishes were washed
afterward. Instead they used tumblers with rims to pour coffee, tea, water, or
rasam down their throat”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“As I got older, I began to appreciate eating with my hands, which allowed me
to savor the warm food through pliant fingers rather than a cold, hard fork or
spoon. In fact, Indians believe that hands add flavor to food.”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes

“feeding a pregnant woman was akin to feeding
God”
― Shoba Narayan, Monsoon Diary: A Memoir with Recipes