It's the little things in Bangladesh that make me love living here.
The other day Dan and Sarah and I went out for dinner to a nearby restaurant called Kashundi. Afterward, we started walking back and passed by a little shop called Mr. Moonshine's. Mr. Moonshine himself is from Tamil-Nadu and he and I speak a little Tamil whenever I go in. I'm finding it hard to really communicate with him (no surprise there after 3 years of not really speaking Tamil) but he's pretty patient with me and always seems excited when I come in. So when we went in this time I said hello and asked if they had any cinnamon powder. The plan was that we could keep some cinnamon around and sometime fry up some bananas in ghee and eat them with vanilla ice cream and cinnamon. The three other people working in the store set out to find the cinnamon. Apparently their more obscure spices weren't labeled though, so this task proved somewhat difficult. I waited for about five minutes, and in the meantime watched as the men working at Mr. Moonshine's went through all of their mysterious unlabeled or mislabeled powders and tasted each on in turn. The fact that this is the system in place at this store just made me smile. Eventually they produced a small bottle labeled BLACK PEPPER and gave it to me. I smelled it and sure enough, it was filled with cinnamon.
I've yet to make the banana dessert, but that's neither really here nor there. The point, if there is one, is that I love how human everything is here. From the way spices are bought in the stores to the way people eat or clean themselves on the streets- everything is openly human here. Perhaps someone could make the argument (and I can already hear Dan or Mitch beginning to) that our automated systems in the US are also human. Here in Bangladesh, however, everything tactile- and I mean touched by humans or an expression of the human experience- is out of doors and out in the open. There's no backroom where people wash after eating or where men in uniforms unpack boxes full of neatly labeled spices- these things are all done right in the store front where everyone can see.
There's probably a greater message that I'm getting at through retelling my observations. When I figure out how to best express it, I'll let you all know.
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3 comments:
I loved your cinnamon story! No doubt shocking to most people in the US, but actually more reassuring in a way. Our politicians talk a lot about "transparency," but much of what happens here isn't nearly as transparent as people actually tasting what is in each box (while you are watching) in order to find the correct stuff. In the end, you actually know what you're getting, even though it is labelled incorrectly. Here it might be labelled as cinnamon but actually be something else. Then there would be the inevitable lawsuit, etc, etc. Interesting...
It reminds me of the little place across the street from your Madurai house, where the folks cooked right in front of you. The place was small, cramped, dirty, and there wasn't really a front door. But, you knew exactly what they were doing with your food cause it was never more than three feet from you and definitely never hidden. A whole new level of transparency. Right?
Ooh, that reminds me: BANANA LEAVES!! Are those big in Bangla? Mmmm, I haven't used a banana leaf as a plate in... I don't know how long.
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