My Uncle who loved Chinese food only slightly less than he loved his daughter always said, "Go to a Chinese restaurant where there are Chinese people eating and they have Chinese waiters." Tough call.
I seldom found Chinese people eating in Chinese restaurants. And the waiters for some reason are all from Manipur pretending to be Chinese by scrunching up their eyes to a slit, like the soldiers in old Indian war films. At least the food was authentic. So I thought. Till now.
It’s been a completely disillusioning exercise to know that the food Indians love to put away in huge quantities is as Chinese as I am Ukrainian. It took a visit to the heartland of the country to come face to face with the fact.
Inside China, poor deprived souls, they've never tasted the sheer joy of sinking their teeth into the crisps outside of the succulent golden fried prawn or had a soul inspiring whiff of the aroma arising from sweet corn crabmeat soup.
My heart bleeds for them. Breathes there a Chinese with soul so elevated that he has actually tasted the tongue tingling pleasure of fish in mustard sauce? Poor lost souls.
The chinese in china eat stir fried, more stir fried, even more stir fried. And stir fried yet again, leaving it to the continuous supply of green tea to tackle the overload of calories. And they eat something called bok choy.
It is the only choy that I baulk at. For your education and edification, bok choy is the cabbage that nature never ought to have created in the first place. Or having made the mistake, had it attacked by swarms of locusts and decimated from earth for ever.
They have sea food of course except that its like nothing as innocent as a shrimp or a crab. It is a series of bearded, antennaed, boggle eyed, squiggly disreputable creatures which no self respecting sea worth its salt, ought to harbour.
Some have a hundred legs too many Some have eyes on their horns to stare you into quivering submission. Or they are so slimy that you wish they had stayed in the hold of theTitantic and not emerged at all. And the fish is as malevolent as a rabid dog on Bangalore streets.
It comes stuffed complete with glaring beady eyes and gnashing teeth challenging you to take a chopstick to it. Thanks but no thanks. I prefer my adversaries without scales and fins. I don't want this generally known, but a stuffed fish gave me nightmares for three nights in Shanghai.
So what is it that Indians love to plough through in dimly restaurants with names that sound like bells with cracks in them complete with red lanterns and a sprinkling of the mandatory dragon ? Eureka ! It’s Indian Chinese - as Indian as Hinglish is a language that owes very little to the queens tongue.
This cuisine is all ours, born and bred within our coastline by Chinese refugees who set out to conquer the Indian palate armed with hefty lashings of ginger-garlic and a token five spice for authenticity.
So bring on the golden fried prawns and Schezwan rice that Schezwan knows not of. And the steaming bowl of sweet corn crabmeat soup and let gobi manjuri make a statement for the Hindi Chini sigh sigh cuisine. Can we export it to China?
