Let them eat cake!

Fudgey chocolate mud pie. Spiced carrot nut cake. White forest butter cream torte.  Local bakeries line the streets of Bangalore.  Glass cases seductively display perfect confections to tempt the passing crowd.  Sugary air billowing onto the sidewalk offer a heavenly pause from the roads' less appetizing smells.

Indian cakes are fit for the Queen.  Perfectly coiffed frosting puffs dusted with shaved bittersweet chocolate and cheery placed just-so. Such a decadent decoration would normally demand an equally high maintenance form of service. A delicate china set with silver cutlery would suffice. Shouldn't the plating reflect the desserts' British influence?

Not so. Local cake consumption is a casual affair.  Indian cakes are regularly eaten at the display counter, off of a small white paper plates with one's hands.  At our local SPAR (ie. our Safeway stand-in), Sasha and I repeatedly witnessed elegantly dressed men and women breaking off pieces of fresh cake and stuffing them into their mouths while on the go.  We found ourselves unintentionally gaping at the etiquette horreur.

But why should we be so appalled by hand eaten cake? Every day we witness Indian's incredible manual dexterity when consuming naan, daal, and curry.

Looking back on the incident, I was startled because the cake looked so Western, so proper, that it demanded European manners.  What would a Japanese traveler think if she saw someone cutting a piece of nagiri sushi with a fork and knife?  The perceived offense would be like eating naan with one's left hand. It just is not done.

With this new perspective, I am compelled to eat South Indian food with my hands.  If I believe cake demands a fork and should be eaten sitting down, then my local friends must also believe okra requires five fingers and a thumb. Years of Western table manners left me unprepared for Indian eating. Americans need cutlery like a child needs training wheels. Yet, that excuse cannot stand.  I've thrown off the shackles of Tiffany's Table Manners and will embrace local etiquette, starting with the childlike wonderment of finger food.