Food

The food is delicious and keeps giving me indigestion. I get lunch at work, and have a heap of lime pickle with the various unidentifiable but tasty mishmashes offered, and have decided that’s the source of the post-lunch agitator in my stomach, so today I will try to hold off. At home, my host, “sister” (pictured posted today) is an excellent cook, with the only flaw being her wish for me to eat as if I were a 16 year old boy – mountains of food, which I am assured is eaten by others after I leave it in the serving dishes. It’s very impolite to put food on your actual plate and leave that behind, so I’m alert to putting my hands over the plate before she can dole out more. She wags her head (a practice I am adopting to be more understood, I imagine) and says “Eat eat eat ahkah [sister], good good good.” “Too much ahkah”, I reply. “No no no, you are too thin, eat eat eat.” Damn, I’m finally a size I like and they all think I must be poor because I’m not nearly fleshy enough. She and her daughter are quite plump, especially big bellies, of which they are very proud. Proves they are rather affluent, which they are, with the two sons in the US, probably sending home pots of money.
I’ve only eaten in one restaurant so far, where there was a basic meal for Rs 15 (about 30 cents) all you can eat, served on a banana leaf. See the photo also posted today. Delicious!