Theyiesinuo Keditsu
One of the best things about coming home is eating with my family. My parents are firm believers of that commonly quoted proverb – “A family that prays together stays together”. My father has extended this to a family eating together. He credits the strong bond he has with his siblings to the meals they have shared together while growing up. So our two daily meals (in the morning and evening) are as important as our daily family devotion, attendance in all are compulsory. Before each meal, my family of five sit around our little dining table and we pray together to give thanks. It is where the foodie in me can be truly spiritual and where I can worship one bite at a time. Fellow foodies will probably understand me when I say eating (good food) can be a spiritual experience.
This is particularly true, when smoked pork cooked in axone is laid out before me. Large Sema style chunks of glistening pork fat, translucent in the edges, steaming rose pink oak scented meat coated in that luxuriously viscous axone gravy. And the scent! Yes, I choose to say scent and before you decide whether you want to laugh or salivate, close your eyes and think of that last pork and axone meal you had...I rest my case. The combined sense of gratitude and awe that something could look, smell, feel and taste this scrumptious has more than once led me to declare that partaking of this dish is an act of worship for me. Even as my devout mother prudently counsels me each time to “search my heart” and see if it was God or Food I worshipped. While I accept my mother’s caution, I cannot help thinking that Christ chose bread and wine as the ultimate symbols of his sacrifice, that too, over a meal.
Meal time is where I learnt that food is a gift from God and where I learnt to thank Him for it. In fact, it is on the dining table, that my father, perhaps noting my nascent love for food, gave me my first opportunity to pray. If I recall correctly, my first prayer went something like, “Dear God, Thank you for this food.” As I grew older, I learnt to pray and thank Him for the food even when I didn’t like it. For instance, I thanked God for Yam, or Kotchu curry when in reality, I was half in tears at the thought of having to eat it. In time, I acquired a taste for it. Now I thank Him in truth. Every time I encounter a trying (non-food) situation or person, I remind myself of Yam curry. Another important skill I have learnt by praying at the dining table is to refrain from swallowing my saliva loudly, with a hiss as I pray. (Ordering food at a restaurant without doing the same is a challenge I have yet to overcome, but that is another story.)
There is something about praying together before eating that consecrates both the food on the table as well as the moment of eating. By praying together, you have entered into some more profound union with the people with whom you share the meal. And this has always made meal times with friends and family more meaningful. So much so that I often long to say a quick prayer with friends for whom this practice is entirely alien. Few attempts have been hilarious, with one friend sincerely saying amen after each word. But with many new friends from different cultures, I can only truly experience this when I break bread with those with whom I share a common cultural background. Food writer Simon Majumdar observes that “the people of Kolkata spend most of their waking lives talking about food...When they are not eating, they are arguing about or talking about past meals.” This could very well be said of Nagas, or at least those Nagas I have had the good fortune of meeting.
Not having had a Naga batch mate or friend from the age of 10 to 18, formative years by anyone’s book, my love for all things robustly scented rendered me a prophet in the wilderness. As I settled into my college hostel, I chose a secluded corner of the dining hall where I could indulge in my gastronomic passion without being accused of emitting unsavoury digestive by-products. I ate with all the drama of an unrecognized martyr when suddenly a voice behind me asked, ‘is that axone?’ And this simple question ended my time in the wild as I met Nagas who relished this until recently misunderstood food. As I met more Nagas, I realised that we shared a pathological obsession with food. Which one of us has not been busy in conversation when someone simply exclaims the word ‘pork’? We involuntarily pause as our minds and senses conjure up image upon exquisite image of pork in all its glorious forms, we collectively (and still involuntarily) sigh and the real subject of our conversation forgotten, proceed to juicily recount our favourite pork dishes. If anyone has accused Nagas of being inarticulate (and many have), she/he has not discussed food with us.
Our passion for pork and Christian culture combined, it is neither difficult nor awkward to propose that we pray before we eat. At those times, when, as always ravenous students, we are far away from home, thanking God for that pot of roughly improvised pork and bamboo shoot curry becomes a profoundly spiritual moment. So it is with this column, through which I hope we can explore and indulge in our shared love for food and life whether we are far away from home or at our dining tables. And as per that ubiquitous Naga tradition of praying before any activity, it seemed only appropriate to write about praying at the start of this column. Think of this, if you please, as a consecration of sorts.
