Saving Face

Paneer and Green Pepper Curry

That Indians don’t emphasize personal space as much as some other cultures do is no secret. We snuggle up to strangers on trains and buses, remember? The concept of personal space seems almost non-existent, particularly to someone visiting from another culture. Or even an Indian returning to India after a spell outside. It does to me every single time I go back.

But this is not just a non-linguistic phenomenon. Linguistically, we are a culture (and I know I’m generalizing) that has a penchant for vocally minding everyone else’s business. We say what we think. We give opinions very freely. We tell people what to do, how to bring up their children, how to best grow their garden, how best to live their lives.

My dad is one who almost always says exactly what he thinks. There is this story he tells, of his younger days, his bachelor days. Quite the eligible bachelor, he was, incredibly well-read, always well-attired, overall, a catch. And there were families very interested in welcoming him into their folds…marrying him off to their daughters, and he was often invited to dine with families with these ulterior motives. On one such occasion, my dad recounts, he was treated to a couple of whiskeys before dinner, and then led to the dining room, by which time he was absolutely starving. He had absolutely no interest in the lady in question, but it was a free, home-cooked meal. Now unfortunately, apparently, the food was absolutely inedible (my dad, if you will recall, has exacting standards), and despite many protestations about how he didn’t usually eat heavy meals, he was repeatedly plied with more food. Another chappati? You must have another chappati. No, no, you have definitely not had enough. Finally, after repeatedly refusing, he acquiesced, with utter resignation. Sure, he said, give me another. We all die sometime, what difference does it make how one dies?

Needless to say, he wasn’t invited back.

The parents, 1969; quite the lookers, weren’t they?

Now my dad has been known to be unusually blunt, even for Indians, but here are a couple of other stories that show that this tendency is not out of the norm.

Like the time I was visiting Bangalore with a good friend from the US, and took her to this small salon down the road from my parents’ house. I love getting manicures and pedicures, as many as possible, during my trips to India, both for the pampering aspect of the ritual, as well as the conversations I have with the women who run the little hole-in-the-wall. Women from the north east. Women who had left behind families, parents, siblings, even children. Left them behind to come to the big city to make better lives for themselves. Their stories are always heartbreaking. Particularly when I think about how life in urban India is so unsustainable.  But that is for another post.

The women at this parlor are lovely human beings, warm, friendly, with whom I communicate in my rather limited Hindi. I am always welcomed in. How are you, madam? How is your work? How are your children? Your son must be big now? And your daughter? Remember madam, when you brought her when she was so small? No madam, I haven’t seen my children for two years. Maybe this year. The time I visited with this friend was before kids. They immediately turned to my friend - they were so excited to see a foreign madam. And I translated many questions. And we sat down to get our manicures. And they cut our nails, and scrubbed and massaged our hands. And we relaxed. Me, feeling guilty, as I always do, and relishing the pampering all at once. And then they looked at my friend’s arms. Madam, you need wax, they exclaimed. Too much hair on your arms.

I was mortified.

That’s not something I would say to ANYONE, and not just because I don’t think one “needs” to get a body part waxed. Which I don’t. Never have. But also because…well, you just don’t go there, do you? Not polite. Ah, but that is the western way of thinking.

And then there was this other interaction with the gentleman we used to have come help us with clean the house where we currently live in Oman (pre-pandemic, of course) a couple of times a month. In his 40s, and always immaculately dressed. A trained electrician in India, but in the Middle East… a house cleaner here makes more money than an electrician there. So much to be said about that, but again, not the point of this post. Tailored, button-down shirt typical of most Indian men. And he always calls us Madam and Sir. Which I have always, always grimaced at. On one of our first few interactions, I asked him to please use our first names, that we didn’t stand on any kind of formality, and specifically not this. And my husband reiterated the request. We were met with firm refusals – it isn’t professional, he said. And then he asked my husband later whether I wanted him to use my first name because that made me feel younger. Is it because madam is feeling old?

I kid you not. Oh my gosh how on earth did he think that was appropriate? Polite? And again, that is a western way of thinking.

And based on this western way of thinking, it would seem, then, based on the examples I have provided here, that Indians don’t mind “invading” their listeners’ spaces, both physical and metaphorical. Which is impolite?

But again, as I have asked in previous posts, how do we define what is polite? Well sociolinguists have come up with many ways to do so – and one focuses on the idea of face. Saving face. Now that is an idea that many cultures are familiar with, and to some cultures, the concept of face-saving is much more important than it is to others. And in some cultures, protecting one’s own face, one’s own culturally-determined public persona, is more important than the face wants of the listener, while in others, the listeners’ face wants far supplant any of the speaker’s. So some cultures are more comfortable telling others what to do, while other cultures favor giving their listeners choices, not imposing their own views on their listeners, and other cultures focus on making themselves appear in as good a light as possible.

So. Based on that, how about if we looked at the Indian invasion of another’s space differently? What if we assumed that we “invade” our listeners’ spaces (my dad’s extreme example notwithstanding; maybe that story was more interesting than illustrative) out of a sense of care? Not interference, not impoliteness, not nosiness, but caring? Caring about their listeners’ welfare? Maybe?  Now I’m certainly not saying this is always true – the old lady living opposite my house when I was a teenager, inquiring..who was that boy who visited you twice last week on a red bike….yeah…that was probably more curiosity, or nosiness, than anything else. But the ladies in the parlor or the gentleman cleaning our house? Probably more out of care? Possibly?

And the reason I started down this particular stream of thought for this week’s post is because I’ve been wrestling with a paper I’m writing on my university students’ email etiquette. I have often judged them as being inappropriate, or not polite enough – as per the Western academic norms I’ve become accustomed to, which dictate that one definitely doesn’t impose on a professor’s time, and that one makes requests quickly so as not to impose. And that one gives options – so the focus is on saving possible embarrassment to the professor – and catering almost entirely to the professor’s face wants. Well in the years I’ve spent here, almost every day, I have wondered at students’ seeming impertinence – long, rambling emails with elaborate explanations, many excuses, always very “I” focused as opposed to “you” focused. And while I’ve been quick to put that down to a lack of both linguistic and pragmatic or sociolinguistic competence on the part of the students, what occurred to me only recently (and I’m almost ashamed to admit how long it has taken for this to occur to me) is that this is hardly as simple as a lack of competence. I mean, sure, there is some of that, too, but the seeming inappropriateness displayed by students in their emails could come more from their need to do everything they can to minimize embarrassment to themselves – so focusing on their own sense of face – which is central to their culture. And how can I fault them for that?

Much fodder for my future classes. So much.

So the recipe for this week has more to do with my dad’s propensity for bluntness. He’s never been shy about expressing his dislike for certain foods – and among his most hated ingredients are paneer and mushrooms. He simply cannot stand either.  And it is quite sad that my mum absolutely loves both – but can’t cook either at home. I remember many occasions when my father expressed disgust at the inclusion of paneer in some vegetable dish at a restaurant – and then there was the time when something we ordered had both mushrooms and paneer. The family had quite the laugh.

Sorry, daddy, but this week’s dish is a paneer and green pepper curry.

I’ve made many versions of this over the years – we absolutely love paneer in my household. I make my own, but you can certainly use store-bought paneer. This particular version is one I created after eating a great paneer and green pepper curry at a restaurant a few months ago. I hadn’t thought before this restaurant experience about crumbling up the paneer – opting, instead, to cut it into cubes. Crumbling it up completely alters the mouthfeel and the taste – so here’s a recipe I hope you enjoy as much as we do.

Paneer and Green Pepper Curry

Ingredients (serves 4-6; vegetarian; gluten-free)

1.     2 Tbsp finely chopped garlic

2.     1 cup finely diced onions

3.     3 cups finely diced green peppers

4.     1lb (about 400g) of paneer, crumbled up; taste it for salt.

5.     2 finely chopped green chillies (or to taste)

6.     3 Tbsp vegetable oil

7.     1 ½ tsp cumin seeds

8.     1 tsp turmeric

9.     2 sprigs curry leaves

10.  1 ½ tsp coriander-cumin-fennel powder (which I first mentioned in an earlier post; I called it Chandri’s Curry Powder)

11.  ½ tsp Kashmiri chilli powder

12.  2 tsp salt (if your paneer has no salt; if it does, reduce this to 1 tsp)

13.  ½ cup chopped cilantro (optional)

Method

1.     Crumble the paneer up – about the size of peas, some a wee bit larger, some a wee bit smaller. If it is in larger pieces, it is absolutely fine, but it alters the mouthfeel of the dish. Crumbling it up as opposed to cutting it up helps it absorb more flavors from the rest of the ingredients.

2.     Heat the oil in a skillet. When the oil is hot, add the cumin seeds and allow them to splutter. Remember that if the oil is too hot, the cumin immediately blackens; if this happens, throw it out and start over.

3.     Once the cumin is spluttering, add in the curry leaves and turmeric. Stand back while the curry leaves, if they are fresh, splutter like mad. This should, as usual, smell incredible.

4.     Now add in the finely chopped garlic and onion, and ½ tsp of the salt. Sauté on medium heat for about 5 minutes, stirring once or twice – this should soften the onion but not allow it to caramelize at all.

5.     Next add in the chopped green pepper and another ½ tsp of the salt. Saute this together with a lid on for about 5 minutes, on low-medium heat. The green peppers should soften a bit, but still have a bit of a bite to them. If you like them cooked longer, saute them for an additional 5 minutes.

6.     Now add the crumbled up paneer, the coriander-cumin-fennel spice blend, the Kashmiri chilli powder, and the remaining 1 tsp of salt (if the paneer has none in it already; be sure to taste it before you make this dish). Stir everything together and cook together, again with a lid on, for about 5 more minutes.

7.     Turn off the heat and stir in the chopped cilantro. Serve hot with a bread of your choice (it goes better with bread than with rice, at least in my household), or simply eat a bowlful of it plain!