After living 21 years in the nice tropical weather of India, I suddenly one day dropped into the United States, in the city of Minneapolis in Minnesota, which is known for its extremely cold temperatures.
This reversal of weather was confusing for me for two primary reasons. The first being that I landed in a new country immediately after my undergrad, so I was not equipped with much worldly-wise knowledge. And secondly, I had mainly been exposed to North Indian food and bits of South Indian cuisine.
So everything came as a shock to me.
New people in a new country.
New weather.
New food.
I genuinely am a sucker for adventure, so I happily was enjoying everything until one fateful day, when I had an encounter with a Mediterranean restaurant on campus, where I had gone after mustering a lot of courage to try whatever “Mediterranean food” means.
The guy had something like a shawarma going for the day and was about to close, but I managed to sneak in just in time and demanded the only thing I felt I knew back then, which, when I think about it now, got blurted out as:
“I want chicken falafel.”
The owner, already exhausted for the day, looked puzzled and annoyed at my request. For reasons that I now clearly understand, but to make sure he wasn’t hearing it incorrectly, he asked me gruffly to repeat what I wanted.
This time, realizing that the owner might have sniffed my ignorance, my artificial confidence took a blow, and I quickly repeated the same thing. I didn’t know anything other than “falafel” that people from the Mediterranean ate, and since I wanted chicken-filled falafel, I blurted out the same thing again, though much more timidly and with a lower-confidence voice.
But the owner, who had asked me this to make sure he had heard me right, now had his confirmation. His puzzled annoyance actually turned into anger, and he started shouting:
“What do you mean by chicken falafel?!!!”
By that time, I was already feeling the pressure of being ignorant and not knowing exactly what I wanted in the first place. And on top of being in a new country, in new weather, all the strength I had mustered had completely vanished, and I ran out of the shop, not knowing any better how to deal with the situation.
It was only later that I learned that falafel is itself made from chickpeas. There was no such thing as the “chicken falafel” I had been so confidently demanding.
And that is how some days of my early life in the States used to unfold.