Escaping? Or Seeking Connection?

Tomato-based chicken curry with curry powder

The thoughts that prompted this post first arose in my mind many years ago. I was 36, very recently single, and going through the typical hard time. Asheville, North Carolina. My good friends decided I needed to go with them to the local version of Burning Man – Transformus. It would be a weekend of camping, they said, and fun, and friends, and getting out of your head. And it sounded amazing.

Now anyone who knows me would know that that does not sound like me at all. I’ve never ever been anything resembling that kind of…er...…cool…for lack of a better word. I didn’t let my hair down that way…or really, any way. And my friends knew this. And knew this would be good for me. And it was. And I am grateful for the experience, as different as it was to anything I’d ever experienced. And wonderful in many ways. There was a sense of community there that I hadn’t seen in a while…and a lot of it looked like practices from other cultures. With groups of people coming together and sharing ideas, food, skills…not at all in an offensive way.

And there was a definite sense of escaping.

And all through that weekend (and since) I wondered what it is that makes people need to let go so much. I mean, so much. The excesses of the weekend, in many ways, troubled me. And I know I hadn’t seen anything. What is it that causes people to need to escape?  And as I thought these thoughts then and have, many times since, I also thought of how often in my years in the US I had seen a look of vacancy in people’s faces…a look of quiet (or not so quiet)…desperation, almost. Like people are always searching, and not knowing what they were searching for.

And after that weekend I remember having conversations with my good friends about reasons for the need for escape. And reasons for people’s sense of… ennui? Wanting? Loneliness? Many other words come to mind. And I also remember thinking and saying that I didn’t often find similar emptiness on people’s faces in India when I went to visit. Even in the midst of all the chaos that is everywhere in urban India. Just too much to do?

But over the past several years, I have increasingly started encountering the same emptiness on faces in urban India too. And I have wondered why.

Now while I can certainly pose the question of why there seems to be this increased sense of vacancy, of disconnectedness, of seeming purposelessness, I won’t be so presumptuous as to posit any answers. I don’t know. I am no psychologist. What I do wonder, however, is how much it has to do with moving away from community. More and more people are living in single family units or alone, more and more people are forced to move away from family, to get to the larger urban centers to eke out a living – remember the lovely women in the salon I wrote about a few weeks ago?

It supposedly takes a village to raise a child. And increasingly, the villages just aren’t there. Across the world. We are more connected than we ever have been before. And more disconnected.

Fast forward to 15 years later. I recently came across Netflix’s Goop Lab on my Netflix feed and was curious. Reactions to Gwyneth Paltrow’s company had been frequent and pretty incendiary – and with good reason. I mean. Vagina-scented candles? Sold for ludicrous amounts of money? And worse, there is an audience for this absurdity? How far has humankind fallen? I turned on the first episode – more out of a morbid curiosity than anything else. And I quickly realized I couldn’t stomach it. And my visceral reaction was due to a myriad of factors not the least of which was the stench of cultural appropriation – in this particular episode, which was about the therapeutic use of certain hallucinogens. So sell a practice that has been a spiritual ritual for centuries in different cultural contexts…and sell the experience for gobs of money.  Sounds about right. But once I’d allowed my thinking brain to come back into focus, and calmed my (albeit warranted) judgy-judgmental reaction, I tried to look differently, to see the forest for the trees, if you will. The larger picture. And I wonder if things like Goop, the phenomena, don’t stem from the same source – a lack of connection and a seeking of human connection? Of connection of any sort? Connection to earth? Connection to land? Spiritual connection?

I was watching an old episode of Bourdain’s No Reservations last night, when he was in Burgundy with Ludo Lefevre. Ludo notwithstanding, it was a great episode. Bourdain remarked after one of several gatherings in the episode that what he missed in America is the creation of memories based around friendships, gatherings, celebrations of life together. And at the end of the gathering, his words were “Oh man, we don’t do this where I come from.” And this same lack of connection is what I have increasingly felt even in India; when I was a child I remember extended families gathering frequently. Or when we visited from abroad, everybody gathered. To celebrate being together again. Now, that rarely happens; instead, I make trips to different parts of the city or country if I want to see people.  Everyone’s too busy in their own lives.

And people seem to need to escape more. Escaping? Or seeking connection? Guess it depends on whether my cup is half full or half empty when I ponder the question.

In moving to the food part of this week’s post, I want to clarify my feelings about the term cultural appropriation. I think the phrase is way too frequently bandied about today; in today’s global world, adapting and adopting are a part of life. And should be. They make things interesting. So a friend wearing a sari and bindi is not cultural appropriation.  But using a certain cultural artefact (including a bindi) without taking the time to recognize its cultural nuances in order to sell a certain (insert very judgmental adjective of your choice here) lifestyle – this is. To me.

But the adaptation of Indian flavors to make dishes – perhaps dishes that don’t exist in india, but use Indian flavors… what’s wrong with that?

And with this thought, I come back to the subject of my very first post – curry. Today, as I’ve mentioned before, most of the western world is familiar with curry as a yellow (often spicy) sauce. Something that uses the ubiquitous curry powder, a yellow spice blend that is commonly available everywhere. And I have gone to some lengths to show that curry in India is hardly so simple. And that the curry the world knows doesn’t really exist in India – remember the post about mathematical permutations and combinations? And this same curry powder that the western world loves has been adapted to suit the palates of many cultures, with the Japanese and Koreans, for example, having their own versions. Still vivid yellow, and with a similar flavor profile. But just different enough.

And while I have made it infinitely clear that regarding all Indian food as curry is plain wrong, there is nothing wrong with appreciating the actual spice blend – the western curry powder for what it is – a flavorful spice blend. And there is nothing wrong with using it to make a perfectly lovely curry. And that’s what we have today; a simple chicken curry using a store-bought yellow curry powder. All store-bought curry powders differ a bit in taste and often in level of spice. If the one you have is particularly spicy, feel free to reduce the amount you use in this recipe. This is a quick and easy recipe, so enjoy!

And no, I won’t be watching anymore Goop Lab.

Tomato-based Chicken Curry with Curry Powder

Ingredients (serves 6 served with a carb of choice)

1.     800g (about 2lbs) of boneless, skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-sized pieces

2.     2 Tbsp fresh lime juice

3.     ½ tsp turmeric

4.     1 ½ cups of finely diced onions

5.     2 Tbsp of finely chopped garlic

6.     1 Tbsp finely chopped ginger

7.     2 green chillies (or to taste)

8.     3 Tbsp vegetable oil

9.     1 Tbsp cumin seeds

10.  2 large bay leaves

11.  1½ cups of crushed tomatoes OR 2 cups of finely diced tomatoes

12.  1½ Tbsp curry powder (if it is spicy, you can reduce the quantity a bit)

13.  2 tsp salt

14.  1½ tsp sugar

15.  1 cup frozen peas (optional)

16.  ½ cup chopped cilantro

Method

1.     Marinate the chicken with the lime juice and turmeric. Marinate it for at least half an hour, in the fridge. If it marinates for a couple of hours, the chicken is more flavorful.

2.     Heat the oil in a heavy skillet or saucepan. When the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds and bay leaves. Allow the cumin seeds to sizzle and then add the diced onion, ginger, garlic, and green chillies.

3.     Sauté the onions, garlic, ginger, bay leaves, and chillies for about 10 minutes on medium  to low heat with 1 tsp salt.

4.     After 10 minutes, add the curry powder and cook for about 3 minutes. Next, add the tomatoes, the remaining 1 tsp salt and the sugar. Cook for 15 minutes to allow the flavors to marry. At the end of 15 minutes, the oil should start seeping out at the edges of the sauce. If, during the 15 minutes of cooking, the tomato mixture dries out too much, add a bit – about half a cup - of water.

5.     Now add the marinated chicken, stir, and cook, stirring occasionally, till the chicken is cooked. How long this takes depends on the size of your bite-sized pieces!

6.     When the chicken is almost completely cooked, add in the frozen peas. This is completely optional, but I absolutely love peas in this curry. Allow the peas to cook for about 5 minutes and then turn off the heat. If you use fresh peas, put them in about five minutes earlier so they cook for about 10 minutes.

7.     Garnish with the chopped cilantro and serve hot with a bread or rice of your choice.