For most kids, lunch time was the best part of the school day: an exciting break from boring school work to socialize with all your friends and finally feed your aching belly. But to the child of an immigrant household, the elementary school lunch tables sometimes felt like the long, daunting columns of a courthouse, with the resident mean girl holding court as the supervising judge.
As an Indian American, I come from a culture that exudes color, diversity and tradition, especially in the form of food. Indian cuisine is incredibly flavorful and makes use of just about every spice you can stuff into a cabinet, so naturally, my mother is and has always been a wizard in the kitchen. However, as much as I preferred a deliciously spicy Indian meal to a bland turkey sandwich, I was terrified of revealing my ethnic roots at the lunch table.
I saw the “cool” girls that I so desperately craved to be friends with buying hamburgers and PB&J sandwiches every day and I winced at the idea of being the butt of their next joke. My mom was usually very mindful of these preferences but one day, she had made chicken biryani (a mixed rice dish flavored with saffron or turmeric) for dinner the night before and thoughtfully packed it for me to take to school the next morning. As soon as I opened my lunch box, I yelled at my mom that I couldn’t possibly take that to school because no one would sit next to me if my food smelled or looked unusual. I remember bursting into tears until my dad came to my rescue and convinced my mom that I should try to fit in and “be more American” to make more friends at school.
I remember my mom’s crestfallen expression as she put the container of biryani back into the fridge and grudgingly gave me money to buy my lunch from the cafeteria that day. This experience followed me throughout middle and even high school as I threw away my mom’s meals into the trash can in favor of more “American” meals prepared by a stranger or even sprayed perfume on my lunch box to try and get rid of the smell of “curry.” Now, almost a decade later, I realize that this deep-rooted sense of shame I felt in my childhood didn’t stem from the smell or appearance of my food but rather the lack of diversity around me. If my fellow classmates had learned to understand and appreciate foods from different ethnicities, this cafeteria trauma that plagues so many children across the country wouldn’t have occurred. These days, more and more Indian restaurants and food trucks have popped up all over the nation and the same foods that I was once ridiculed for are now recognized for their unique flavor and even considered “trendy.” But as happy as I am about Indian cuisine becoming more mainstream, nothing could ever really beat my mom’s homemade chicken biryani