Chapter 6: Food and Dress

(Indian Bride)

This was one of the most interesting chapters for me so far because so much of it will be related to the trip to India this summer. I will see, smell, and eat these foods that I am reading about and see people dressed in this way, which makes this reading very exciting!
It is very easy to overlook, but food and dress have so much to do with status, religion, politics, etc. so it was good that this chapter reminded me of this.
When I think of Indian food, I think that it is very distinctly India...it is different from Chinese and Japanese, different from Thai...it is just INDIAN. One thing I found very interesting from this reading was that so many of the ingredients we see in India food is not Indian at all. These include peanuts, chilies, tea, millet, etc. Sometimes it is easy to forget that India was a British colony for so long and was very involved with trade, so it would make sense that they have incorporated ingredients from all over the world. However, until I read this chapter...that had not clicked with me yet!
Foods are also seen as either "hot or cold" and hot foods cause different reactions in people than hot foods do according to Indian tradition. Hot foods (such as pork, beef, intoxicants) cause courage, restlessness, and anticipation for action. Cold foods (like dairy, honey, chicken, etc) produce spirituality. This is interesting to me because there is no such concept that is defined in western society that I know of, but there are also some similarities. For instance, I have heard of people having a "stiff drink" to build up courage in anticipation of some action. However, the more direct association to western culture is that it seems to me that "hot" foods are things that men stereotypically eat more and "cold" foods are more stereotypically female in western culture. This is intriguing to me because this could also perpetuate the stereotype that men are more courageous and prone to action, whereas women are more spiritual. I just thought that was an interesting parallel.
As far as dress is concerned, I chuckled when I read, " 'Pink is the navy blue of India'". I noticed this in my last post as well (in the last chapter) through the "Pink City" so I found this interesting. I also liked learning about what different colors represented in Indian culture. For instance, red, green, and yellow are seen as happy colors--relating to fertility and good luck. I found it interesting that colors of mourning were white and pale colors...very different from the West which uses black to signify mourning. Would this be because after death or in times of sickness the body loses its color? I wondered this, but the text did not provide answers like this.
Brides often wear red and it is interesting how many garments a bride is required to have--some given by the groom's family, some by her family, but many of them she makes herself. Jewelry is also crucial to a bride and to a married woman. Different types of jewelry signify different things such as a bride, married woman, widow, etc. There are also other interesting symbols of a bride that are worth mentioning, one of which is that the husband puts a red streak in the part of the woman's hair to signify their "happy conjugal life."