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This essay was originally published in The Book Review India.
If you’ve read Delirious Delhi, then this essay is essentially an epilogue: a postscript about the expat’s post-India life, and what it’s like to have lived in India and miss it so very much.
Delhi: The Lament of the Hungry Ex-Expat
By Dave Prager
I spotted the Indians entering Denver’s Botanic Gardens about fifty feet ahead of us. It was their clothes that got me excited: both ladies in the family wore saris.
I nudged Jenny with excitiment. She sighed. “Dave, this is getting creepy.”
Creepy? Since when is it creepy to follow strange Indians around a park hoping to catch their eyes, start a conversation, win their trust, become friends, exchange numbers, and accept an invitation to dinner—all because I want to eat homemade Indian food again?
I mean, doesn’t every American who once lived in Delhi do that?
* * *
The year-and-a-half my wife Jenny and I lived in Delhi’s Hauz Khas Market neighborhood changed me forever. Not just because of the career boost from my promotion to the Gurgaon office. And not just because the book I wrote about Delhi is spinning through HarperCollins India’s printing facilities even as this essay goes to print. No, it’s mostly because now that I’m gone, my stomach forces my brain to view every Indian I see as a potential conduit to the food I miss so much.
I’m not trying to be creepy. I just miss the food.
Before we moved to Delhi, I had no appreciation for the dynamics of the cuisine. I was perfectly content with the cheapest Indian buffet serving the stalest garlic naan and the driest tandoori chicken. In those innocent times, every dish on every menu sounded equally exotic and exciting; I’d order whatever I didn’t recognize and, with full ignorance as to both the quality and the composition of what I was eating, enjoy every bite of it.
But in the years since we’ve left Delhi, not a single Indian restaurant has achieved even the standards of my office canteen’s watery dal. I’ve yet to taste a paneer as milky and smooth as that from Saket Select Citywalk Mall food court. And even Singapore’s top-rated Indian restaurants were just a distant echo of what was, to me, the gold standard of Indian food: the meals our maid Ganga would cook for us three times a week.
(Wikipedia tells us that Annupurna is the Hindu goddess of food; experience tells us that Ganga is her earthly manifestation.)
We’ve tried the trendiest Indian restaurant on Denver’s South Pearl Street, the Singapore branch of Saravana Bhavan, and a dhaba in the back of a suburban Indian grocery in Aurora, Colorado; I’ve departed them all with my belly full but my heart empty. I’ve even purchased the same MDH spice boxes that Ganga used to cook her heavenly meals for us, faithfully following the recipes printed on the back and failing each time to come anywhere close.
Which is why I stare so hungrily at every Indian that I see.
* * *
We’re in a restaurant in Estes Park, Colorado, a mountain town near one of America’s most spectacular national parks. A bagel is in my hands but my tongue is tasting creamy dal makhani, because all I can focus on are the unmistakable accents emanating from the couple at the table next to us. They’re discussing hiking routes and camping spots; I’m hearing menu plans and cooking instructions.
“Where are you from?” I ask, leaning towards their table, hoping the answer is “Nizamuddin East” so that our conversation flows easily to kebab stands and butter chicken.
The man looks up. “Seattle,” he tells me, curtly. He turns back to his map.
I return to my bagel. Now it just tastes like a bagel.
* * *
After leaving Delhi, Jenny and I spent a year in Singapore and then returned to the States to start a family. Success: our baby daughter Georgiana is sweet, adorable, and the perfect tool to aid my quest to ingratiate myself to Indians.
She first played her part at the San Francisco airport. Approaching the gate for our flight back to Denver, I spotted an Indian couple and their infant son. Bells clanged in my head: she was wearing a salwar. Which meant she was born and bred outside the US.
I innocuously steered George’s stroller toward them.
Jenny rolled her eyes and walked off to get coffee.
I sat a few seats down from them, removed George from her stroller, and engaged in a deliberately-conspicuous bout of tongue-waggling and noise-making. Sure enough, George’s irresistible smile drew their eyes; and that was the opening I needed.
“How old is your son?” I asked. I didn’t actually care how old he was; I just wanted to confirm their accents. And as they proudly boasted that Nikhil or Naveen or something was a year or eighteen months or seven or whatever, all that my brain registered were pronunciations that implied a childhood immersed in sambar. With chicken biryani clouding my thoughts and phantom thalis teasing my nostrils, I exclaimed (loudly, to mask my stomach’s rumbling): “Oh! You’re from India! We lived there for eighteen months!”
And from there, the conversation progressed just as I’d hoped. They were from Chennai, but they knew Delhi, and together we grew pleasantly melancholy reminiscing about places and tastes that were, for both of us, equally dear and equally far. By the time Jenny joined us with her coffee, we were chatting about old days like old friends, contrasting our transitions to each other’s cultures, recalling the restaurants we missed the most, and jointly lamenting the fact that nobody knows how to cook an uttapam west of Chowpatti Beach.
* * *
My nostalgia for Delhi generally fixates on food, but it can go deeper. At three o’clock on a workday, for instance, I’ll look blearily up from my computer and fantasize about the chaiwallah outside my Gurgaon office, just seven thousand miles to my left. Had it been three o’clock in that office, Dipankar and Murali and I would have paid him a visit and enjoyed his five-rupee respite from our responsibilities.
(Although this moment of freedom, too, leads my mind back to food. Because here in America, as I stand by the coffee maker, the nearest snack is at a convenience store a mile away. How can my country be considered a world leader when we’re so lacking in sidewalk samosa vendors?)
At these times, when I’m missing the camaraderie as much as the cuisine, I turn to the Internet. I vicariously join my Delhi friends as they motorcycle to Leh or eat parathas in Old Delhi. I toast the country on Republic Day. I cheer cricket players on a first-name basis. And I join them in experiencing the changing capital city—like when my former coworker Nobin switched from the office cab to the Delhi Metro for his commute to Gurgaon. From his seat, he Tweeted praise at the shining municipal infrastructure that warmed me in my chair half a world away.
I’ve even grown nostalgic for Delhi’s traffic, of all things. Imagine getting misty-eyed for MG Road! But it’s happened: though there was nothing in Delhi I hated more than my commute to Gurgaon, the traffic in Denver is, in a way, worse. Because when I descend the on-ramp into four orderly lanes of vehicles in which nobody honks, nobody jostles for advantage, and nobody takes to the shoulders to jump the queue, I realize that Delhi’s traffic, for all its misery, also contained a kind of freedom: the skill of the driver could alter the course of the jam. A good driver could seize ephemeral opportunities revealed by shifting vehicles to shave seconds off the commute, or to cross the Ring Road before the light turned red.
But Denver’s traffic is egalitarian in its oppression. Once you’re on the highway, you’re committed to the collective fate. Delhi’s traffic allows for individual heroics; Denver’s traffic is entirely communal.
* * *
But I live in America now. I accept it: derivative restaurants, watery tea, non-negotiable traffic, and streets that are empty of samosas.
Which is why I can’t imagine that I’m the only American creeping around Indians to spark culinary connections. Because those of us who left our stomachs in Safdarjung know that expat Indians must be coping with the same emptiness—except that expat Indians possess the wisdom to transform frozen okra and boxed spices into a glorious bhindi masala. They can tease bhangan bharta out of the most stoic eggplant. Their kitchens are their link to Delhi, and we former residents—or, at least, this former resident—want in.
So far, though, I’ve had no luck. At the San Francisco airport, for instance, our connection to that Indian couple was severed when boarding began for the Denver flight: only we stood up. Our new friends were waiting for a flight to Arizona, which meant that no dinner party was imminent.
Nor could I make any headway at that restaurant in Estes Park, where I looked up from my bagel with one last desperate attempt: “No, where are you originally from? India? Because we spent eighteen months living there!” To which the woman smiled gently and said, with finality, “Your daughter is beautiful.” Her tone left no further room for discussion.
Nor could I make it work at the Denver Botanic Gardens, where I’d spotted that Indian foursome entering ahead of us. Our meandering paths had crossed theirs a half-dozen times, despite Jenny’s best efforts to steer us away from them. Finally, near the Lilac Garden, I spotted my opening: the patriarch of the family was posing his wife, daughter, and son-in-law for a photo. I quickly offered to snap the four of them together.
He declined. In accented English. To which I replied in my own terrible Hindi, “Aap guessa hai!?”
The four of them looked at me.
“Hindi bollna?” I asked.
“Are you speaking Hindi?” the father finally asked me.
“Yes!” I beamed. “We lived in Delhi for a year-and-a-half.”
“Oh. We don’t speak much Hindi.”
They turned back to their photo. I turned back to my wife. And that night for dinner, I sautéed some onions and tomatoes, emptied a can of chick peas into the pan, and dumped in a few tablespoons of MDH channa masala mix.
It was not like Ganga’s at all.
I wish that Ganga could also read about her cooking skills….
Nisha: I saw Ganga when I was in Delhi last month. Not only did I tell her how much we missed her cooking, and not only did I give her a signed copy of the book, but I actually paid her to cook a bunch of our favorite foods that I froze and brought all the way back to the States so Jenny could enjoy them. So I think Ganga has some idea of how much her cooking meant to us…
Oh, how I know this feel. Now that I’m back in NZ, I expect friendship & hospitality from every Indian I see. Needless to say, my hit-rate is no better than yours.
This makes one really engrossing…and sad read. I hope you find some Indian food solace soon, and enjoy your american cuisine as much. Perhaps commenting on a few Indian blog writer’s pages will yeild better results? Your blog, for one, is truly entertaining, and I am sure a person who writes about Indian food sitting in the US will be happier entertaining you than an arbit Indian on the streets!
Oh…and to add. People in Salwar Kameezes and Sari could also be from Pakistan and Bangladesh, respectively. Boasting to them about Hindi and Delhi may not yield too happy results.
I actually feel sad about you. Maybe you could try your luck replicating dishes from youtube videos.
This is really well-written. Having lived in Singapore for 18 months I totally echo your opinions of the food there.
I know *precisely* how you feel (I spent a year and half in Italy, and now I’m back in India). I try to kid myself that I’m doing it to stay in touch with a culture I love, but it is mostly the food (Which no Delhi restaurant can recreate…. Diva’s gnocchi is worse than the one at my University Mensa)!
As for your problem about homecooked Indian food in America – a lot of my single Indian friends in NYC/NJ, and the Valley have Indian cooks (mostly older Gujarati ladies) who come in a couple of times a week and stock up the freezer with the kind of food that mom made…. maybe there are similar Annapurnas in Denver? Ask the local Indian association or something, I’d say!
Hey Dave,
I wanted to join your book launch party in Delhi but could not due to my busy schedule. I also had lived in Delhi for 3 years and now I m in Chandigarh (just 5 hours away from Delhi). Even though the its one of the best city in India, I still miss Delhi a lot and board on Delhi bound bus whenever I get a chance.
BTW there a re a lot of websites available full of easy Indian recopies. Practice one dish for at least 5-6 time and u’ll be get the familiar taste finally.
Amit
Great post!
First of all, stop using the recipes on the back of the MDH boxes. They are crap. I highly recommend the recipes from manjulaskitchen.com. They come the closest to the food that my Indian MIL makes (my in-laws are Jain, from the Delhi area).
I feel your pain though. The longing for the food we get when we go to India is sometimes literally painful when it gets too long between visits. There are certain things you just can’t get here…they just don’t ever taste the same.
Dave, you know what I love about your writing? You outdo Indian authors at making Delhiites living abroad nostalgic about Delhi!
PS: Bought a copy of your book when I went to Delhi for the holidays. It’s on my shelf and I’m looking forward to reading it!
You are invited to lunch/dinner/chai whenever you are in seattle
Dave, here’s a pro tip.
Cook things a little longer than you’re used to. For example, for your Chana Masala, sauteeing isn’t enough. You need to cook the onions until they’re golden. Then add the tomatoes, cook them until they’re almost desolved. Add the spices, cook another couple of minutes. Add the chick peas and cook them in the spices for 10 mins or so. You get the idea. Indian food is all about going slow and taking the time to build flavours.
Oh, and here’s a secret ingredient. Ginger Garlic paste. Add it just before adding the tomatoes and let it cook for a minute for that back home taste. Good luck
This is great advice! These are the ingredients that go in most of my MIL’s dishes (and the ones I cook now):
- Rai (mustard seeds)
- Curry leaves
-Onion
-Ginger Garlic Paste
-Haldi (turmeric)
-Red chilli powder.
It may not be the same as Delhi cuisine but it gives authentic flavour!
Loved the blog post!
Beautifully written Dave. Evocative, poignant and filled with longing. This should find its way into the second reprint of the book.
Hi Dave and Jenny
If you happen to be in the greater Boston area, give me a shout. We’d love to have you over for a home cooked meal.
Wah, Dave ji! You’re perhaps the only one who can make even the traffic here sound rather appealing.
It might just help me appreciate the madness from a new perspective on my evening commute. For about 3 minutes, at least. Before the ‘HR’ taxis barge in and the gaalis return.
PS:
Really enjoyed the last chapters of the book.
Not saying I didn’t like the middle part, or that I thought it was beginning to slow the book down, or anything like that.
Good that we cleared that up. Right, then.
Arre wah, yaar. Just get in your car and come down I-25 to Las Vegas, New Mexico and we’ll cook some real Indian food for you. I know your pain.
I agree with Hanisha! My family in NJ have this Indian “aunty”
come over once or twice a week and cook lots of different things for the entire week and freeze it! Makes for good variation and no longing looks at the refrigerator!
Like always so much fun to read. I feel like I really know you guys
.. And if you’re ever in Fargo, ND give my boyfriend a shout! He makes the best parathas and veg pulao! Not to mention halwa! 
———————
Gayatri Kumar
Look who’s Wearing (LwW)
Whenever you are in New York next, We’ll go to my mom’s in Queens for some mind blowing punjabi home cooking. Invitation always open.
Shalini, Boston123, Steve, Gayatri, Gabo — your generosity makes me want to go on a homemade Indian food road trip. Maybe my next book
In the meantime, since we don’t have any trips planned any time soon: does anybody know anybody in Denver?
Wow!!! If you guys happen to be in the greater Chicago area, drop in. I can rustle up a good “Indian” meal.
Hi Dave,
really enjoy reading your blog. I’m sorry you have not had success in being invited back for an indian home cooked meal. Whenever you are in the UK you are most welcome to join us for a meal. In return, you can regale us with more of your experiances. My wife makes a mean Rajma and great Dal Makhani.
Hey Dave, I nominated you for the versatile blogger award at http://versatilebloggeraward.wordpress.com/vba-rules/ because I really enjoy your blog. cheers
Hi Dave
Your blog is so full of life! And you’re more Indian than most of us!
It’s nice to see from the comments that you’re being invited to Indian homes all over the world!
As an Indian who has lived in the US for over 25 years, I now feel guilty about the fact that I go for weeks without eating Indian food and don’t miss it that much.
If you are in Sydney Australia. Be my guest and enjoy some home cooked North Indian food
Dave, Enjoyed the post very much. And if you are ever in NJ/NYC area, you are welcome to the bhindi masala we make out of mucuous-y okra!
-Proteinbound
Dave, I really enjoyed reading your post. So poignant, so full of nostalgia! That’s the power of travel in a nutshell, it can completely alter a person…every place we visit ultimately becomes a part of us.
Look forward to reading your book now!
Beautifully written.
Hi Dave, I found your blog from The NRI. Loved reading your post. I also lived in Delhi for some years, a migrant from Kolkata. Initially hated Delhi and then fell in love with the city. Dream of going back to live there.
I currently live in London, if you ever come to this side of the pond, you guys have an invitation to our house. My husband and me, we cook authentic Indian food at home. First generation Indians with proper Indian accents
Cheers,
Suchi