How to Eat

Why Indians eat with their Hands

If you’re not an Indian, then you may have at some time wondered why Indians eat with their hands and not with forks and spoons. Though these days, forks and spoons are a common sight in India, the traditional way of having food is sans any cutlery. While Westerners prefer to use forks, spoons and knives to eat their food and the Orientals use chopsticks, Indians prefer fingers to ‘fork in’ their food.

Ask any Indian, and he will say that in order to completely enjoy Indian food, it must be eaten with the hands. Moreover, Indian foods are designed to be eaten with hands. The method that Indians follow when eating such foods, is to break the bread, dip it in one of the condiments, - vegetable curry or chutney - and eat it. Rice is customarily blended with curries so that each mouthful is unique. In the past, meals were served on banana leaves. Using forks or knives to blend curry and rice on banana leaves would have only ended up shredding the leaves. Eating with the fingers was definitely a better bet!”

Most Indians eat with their right hand because the left one is considered unclean. One thing that should be noted is that Indians eat only with the right hand. The left hand is considered unclean, and eating with it is frowned upon. However, when serving food or when passing a dish to someone else, it is the clean left hand that should be used.

There is a philosophy behind this Indian practice of eating with the fingers. In India, eating is perceived as being a very sensual activity. The idea is that one should be able to enjoy the process of eating with as many of the senses as possible – taste, smell, sight, and touch.

So ask a bunch of Indians why they eat with their hands and they will tell you that Indian food tastes best when eaten with fingers!

Many Indians readily identify with the custom of eating food, especially at religious functions, off leaves. Banana leaves in the South of India are the most common examples. This account explains how Indians in Trinidad have applied this age-old custom to a native plant, the soharee.

The Indian made his appearance in Trinidad, and indeed in the Caribbean, after the abolition of slavery in 1834. Most of the Indians who came to Trinidad chose to make this new land their home. As a result of this decision the descendants of the Indian immigrants now constitute over 42% of the population of Trinidad. The other major ethnic group in Trinidad comprises of the descendants of African slaves and they constitute 41% of the total population. The mixed (Indian, Black, White, Chinese, etc. inter-marriages) population is 15% while other ethnic groups (Whites, Chinese, Syrians, etc.) comprise 2% o the population.

The Indian Hindus brought their traditions with them from their homeland and adapted them to new circumstances in Trinidad. One of the traditions that found easy adaptability in the new land was the custom of eating food from leaves, especially at religious functions. In India, food is traditionally served on leaves during religious occasions and other festivals. Fig, banana, leaves are commonly used and the "donaa" a knitting of lotus leaves into the shape of a plate is also used.

These days, at a Hindu function, long tables with chairs or benches are lined up in a special area designated for feeding guests. Soharee leaves are placed before each person seated at the table. Servers come running in with paratha, another with rice and others with a variety of Indian curries. The whole exercise is one of thrill and excitement. There is no eating limit and guests can eat as much as they wish and even take some food home. Indian food is commonly cooked in a big bandara pot and a whole village can partake of the meal. There is a common belief that the food tastes sweeter when served on a Soharee leaf and eaten with hands, says medical anthropologist Dr Kumar Mahabir, who is also the Director of the Indo-Caribbean Cultural Council.

The Hindus in Guyana and Suriname, unlike their Trinidad counterparts, use lotus leaves which grow in abundance there.

In recent times Hindus who have migrated from Trinidad to New York, Miami and Toronto keep in touch with their friends and family to get a supply of soharee leaves. Instead of using Western cutlery they serve their guests at pujas, Ramayan yagnas and weddings on soharee leaves and keep a tradition alive.

There was an incident it was reported many years ago, where a foreign visitor was served Indian food on a soharee leaf. He ate all the food and also devoured the leaf because he thought the leaf was part of the dish. After eating the soharee leaf, he said the salad was a bit stiff.

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Fashion

FASHION

Fashion is not something that many people think that they have or do. Yet, today, it has become very easy for everyone to appreciate the various aspects of the fashion world. When you are interested in the clothing that you wear, the accessories that you dress it up with or the fashion shoes that you put on your feet, then you do care about fashion. The best thing is that it doesn't have to be hard to benefit from this either. Women's wear and men's wear are designed to be practical, good looking, well fitting and even affordably priced. Fashion is something we deal with everyday. Even people who say they don't care what they wear choose clothes every morning that say a lot about them and how they feel that day.

Fashion is revealing. Clothes reveal what groups people are in. In high school, groups have names: "goths, skaters, preps, herbs." Styles show who you are, but they also create stereotypes and distance between groups. For instance, a businessman might look at a boy with green hair and multiple piercings as a freak and outsider. But to another person, the boy is a strict conformist. He dresses a certain way to deliver the message of rebellion and separation, but within that group, the look is uniform. Acceptance or rejection of a style is a reaction to the society we live in. Fashion is a language which tells a story about the person who wears it.

Fashion is big business. More people are involved in the buying, selling and production of clothing than any other business in the world. Everyday, millions of workers design, sew, glue, dye, and transport clothing to stores. Ads on buses, billboards and magazines give us ideas about what to wear, consciously, or subconsciously.

Clothing can be used as a political weapon. In nineteenth century England, laws prohibited people from wearing clothes produced in France. During twentieth century communist revolutions, uniforms were used to abolish class and race distinctions.

Today's fashion clothing is more than just affordable. Did you know that today's woman and man wants to feel comfortable in the clothing that they wear? Comfortable does not mean sloppy, but it does mean easy to wear. Fashion today allows for this more and more. What's more, many of today's looks in the fashion industry are designed around everyone's size. Those that are a bit taller or heavier set can still find their favorite name brands in larger sizes. Both men and women realize that they don't have to fit any specific body size to look great.

Of course, the underlying aspect of fashion is that it looks great. Curves, cuts, and a tailored look are easily obtained in many of the pieces of clothing that you purchase. Most of the fashion industry tailors to these needs, allowing even the simplest look truly amazing. With affordable clothing from all of the top designers in your local shops and on the web, that looks great and feel amazing, more and more people can enjoy fashion today. Will you allow fashion into your world so that you too can start enjoying the way that it feels and looks?

Fashion is a term that usually applies to a person that is often wearing the 'in' clothes , but quite often applies to a personal mode of expression that may or may not apply to all. Inherent in the term is the idea that the mode will change more quickly than the culture as a whole. The terms "fashionable" and "unfashionable" are employed to describe whether someone or something fits in with the current popular mode of expression. The term "fashion" is frequently used in a positive sense, as a synonym for glamour, beauty and style. In this sense, fashions are a sort of communal art, through which a culture examines its notions of beauty and goodness. The term "fashion" is also sometimes used in a negative sense, as a synonym for fads, trends, and materialism.

In the past fifteen years, urban Indonesian women have increasingly chosen to adopt a form of Islamic dress called busana Muslim. This shift could be read as an index of two apparently contradictory or mutually exclusive phenomena, a rise in Islamic piety and a rise in consumerism. This article suggests that rather than reducing the popularity of Islamic fashion in contemporary Indonesia to either religion or consumerism, the rise of Islamic fashion should be understood within a context of national debates about modernity and piety. Through a consideration of Islamic fashion as commodity fetish, I argue that the commodification of Islamic dress in urban Indonesia has not been a straightforward process, but rather is an arena for Indonesian Muslims to think about the relationship among faith, gender, and materiality.