An Indian Abroad Must Be in Want of Spice
In a new country, in the middle of a global pandemic, Balaji Iyer navigates his excitement to explore a new cuisine, as well as his longing for the familiar foods of home.
A warming soup with tendrils of miso floating through, impeded by clam-like shells. Clam, I say. A dozen tongues click. There is a bit of discussion, back and forth. Nobody knows its name, its Chinese name. It cannot be translated, they insist. Somebody knows the Japanese name; that too turns out to be untranslatable. Finally, they settle on its Taiwanese Hokkien name: lâ-á. I am Taiwanese now.
In 2020, the year when so much happens all at once, I relocate to Taiwan. Amid mask-wearing and quarantining, I arrive, with two bags and half a kilo of assorted masalas. As the pandemic spreads, supplies contract. Indian rice (Oryza Sativa Indica) dries up first. Then there is an atta shortage. Everything comes to a crashing halt one day, when no more dhania or methi can be found. And so, I begin my journey eating in Mandarin.
I feel adrift; motherless; the absence of a vocabulary for all the bounty of food around me. At work, I dutifully shovel fàn (rice) into my mouth with kuàizi (chopsticks). Except the rice is not rice. It is purple and fat and starchy, and I can bite into it. It smells rice-like, and not like rice at the same time. There are vegetables to help xiàfàn (rice-go-down). There are hóngshāo qiézi (braised eggplants), and pàocài (bright, tart pickled cabbage leaves). There are stems and shoots, roots and leaves of sorts. There is a mochi (bonda-like rice cake), all sweet and squishy, betraying its speckled brown look. There is sweet, saucy fànqiè chāo dàn (tomato and eggs). It is exciting and terribly delicious. It makes me want to not eat anymore, and go back home — to rasam and mangoes, and eternally comforting yogurt.
The Taiwanese night market is wondrous; there is so much more, that is louder and colorful. There is jī pái (chicken steak) pop-corny, sweet and finally spicy — after an exhausting queue. There is a mild reek of death and sandas (shit/toilet), my first brush with the celebrated chòu dòufu (stinky tofu). There are hundreds of bāozi (buns) — hújiāo bǐng (yeasted buns with peppery pork filling); mǎn tóu (sans filling, childless and deep fried with condensed milk oozing over); nǎi huáng bǎo (milk-yellow-bun) that look like momos and taste almost like kozhakattais. Then there are miàn (noodles). Think niú ròu miàn (beef noodle soup) — white strands of obedient rice noodles in a soulful, aromatic broth, with people lining up to choose tendons and shanks of beef to go in their bowls. There are fatter, drier noodles, speckled with Sichuan peppercorns to trap the unwary — dàn dàn miàn. There are silky noodles of unknown provenance, floating about with chunks of chicken topped with heavenly sauces. Then there are hordes of noodles of every shape and size, swimming about in umami seas speckled with fish balls and seaweed, all of which are named in a dizzying profusion of tonal Mandarin and flat Japanese, flecked with singsong Taiwanese Hokkien.
Then there is fine dining. There are sashimi platters with pink, ridged salmon. There is yellow sashimi and pale sashimi and colorful sashimi — by now I am out of my reckoning, a fish out of water myself. Sushi arrives by miniature express train and people pluck it out of the air, using chopsticks with weary expertise. I seek comfort in burning my throat with wasabi. We eat the feted xiǎolóngbǎo (soup dumpling), with an almost religious reverence. I am handheld through the process. I come back home, laden with new words, new ways. I cook the simplest of dal-chawals. I eat it piping hot with my hands, crouched over the counter. Some of the words fall away. Relief is palpable.
It takes time to eat through this island. It takes considerably longer to know and name everything. My eyes learn new colors and my nose, a thousand different smells. My hands learn to grasp chopsticks and admire the feel of little ceramic bowls. I hold the bowls in my left, gesticulate with my right. I drop my chopsticks, I use them as skis to dig into slippery bits, I point, I commit a thousand faux pas. I drink tepid milk tea, ghosts of my people excoriating me. I slurp iced bubble tea out of fat straws, the novelty of it all overruling the pleas of my full stomach. My teeth learn about ‘Q’ — the prized textural zenith of Taiwanese cuisine and when I think I know it all – I am confronted with a sweet potato ball that claims to be ‘QQ’. I sing the alphabet bo, po, mo, fo…zhi, chi, shi. I am a child, reciting months and days, colors and vegetables, píngguǒ (apple) and mángguǒ (mango). I make simple sentences; I mess up hugely. I cannot get my tones right; I cannot find any buffalo milk. I drink fruit teas by the gallon and I miss filter coffee so badly, it is a physical longing.
I draw some conclusions:
1. Cafeteria food is mediocre everywhere. The food is occasionally enlivened by ingenious pairings of available odds and ends.
2. Everyone starts their Taiwanese food journey at 7-11. It is always open — and more importantly, it is non-judgmental, catering to your 2am alcohol induced ice-cream cravings, and pushing you to work the next morning, with hyper-processed foods and excellent coffee.
3. Asian bakeries (about which full novels need to be written) are the gift that keep on giving. There’s one for every season. The one you take your friends to visit; the one you reserve for special dates; one for cake and wine nights, and another for eating with melancholic gusto, as the world passes you by.
4. Indian grandmas and Taiwanese ah-ma’s are kin, separated by distance. Never have I met one that let me leave on an empty stomach, regardless of my dietary preference of the day. Boss grannies whipped up delicious vegan dumplings on the spot, spiced their chicken noodles for me, and sent me packing full of goodies with a conspiratory twinkle in their eye.
It is a truth universally acknowledged that an Indian person abroad must be in want of spice. Taiwanese food is many things — aggressively umami, subtly sweet, verdantly herbal – but it lacks heat. There are Japanese curries, and there is the ubiquitous Indian curry powder. But there is no kaaram/teekha (a concept I struggle to explain to my polite colleagues). I long for chili, the gentle heat that props up coconutty kootus and chutneys, the firm crunch in a kachumber, the adrenaline rush of biting into a hot vada pao. A Sichuanese colleague — those of the famous málà (numbing-spicy) persuasion understands my plight and I find solidarity in solitude. I learn of the mythical morning market, of how it is so full of every kind of produce. Of how it is a wet-market, a word spoken in hushed tones. Of how one might find chilies there. I know it is behind the mall. I know how to get there and how to get out. But I don’t go. I buy bright, outsize, perfect vegetables covered in shiny plastic, labeled in English at sanitised, western supermarkets. There is no Chinese on my bag, no soil on my greens.
Eventually I stray into the market, amidst a sea of people, into a path flanked by trussed poultry and coils upon coils of intestines. Markets in India seem sterile in comparison. Black & white. Veg & Non-veg. Food in Taiwan is dichotomous only as eater and eaten. There is a profusion of meats, intertwined with bountiful produce. For every unfamiliar item, there is a known friend waving back at me. There are kumbalanga/pooshnikai (ash gourds), neatly cut into disks; there are pumpkins, and their smaller Japanese disco variety; each segment a different shade of orange-green. Okras, small and fat are severely organised into piles of tens. There is black poultry hanging on metal hooks, their red wattles catching the eye. There are chicken feet and pig heads, blood cakes and intestinal sausages.
Amid fish balls and dried noodles and produce that I have no language for, I finally find coconuts. Coconuts and vazhakkai (unripe banana), chenai (yam) and chembu (taro). A wizened crone waves luólè (basil) at me. It is wonderfully fragrant, fresh and almost purple, the little leaves tight and budding, still. As I scoot over and look at her leafy piles, she conspiratorially pulls out her pièce de résistance; bòhé (pudina/mint). She sends me over to the next old woman, who drops into my bag a fistful of làjiāo (chilies), all the while whispering something in Taiwanese Hokkien. Là ma? (Spicy?) I confirm, in my woefully inadequate Mandarin. “là, là” (spicy, spicy) she smiles with a toothless grin.
She is right, the chilies are supremely hot. They’re not crisp or green or pointy, but they’re wonderfully kaaram (hot-spicy). And in that moment, in my tiny kitchen, surrounded by plastic bags of mint and basil and coriander and chilies and ginger, I’m finally home.
Balaji Iyer lives in Taiwan. He likes reading, eating and writes occasionally.
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