APPLY GHEE, RUB VIGOROUSLY

When I still worked at the Indian restaurant I witnessed several food fights. It's an Indian thing.
Food is worth fighting for, over, about.

Or with.

Several years ago, the vile South Indian woman who worked at the restaurant where I was the khazanchi got into a screaming match with the Punjabi headwaiter. Not unusual, except that this time she grabbed a bucket of rice pudding and dumped it over his head in front of a full house.
It was a busy evening - over a hundred and fifty people stared, mesmerized, at what appeared to be a hysterical yeti made out of creamy white goo.


PUDDING

Rice pudding, as everyone knows, is border-line sacramental.
In many parts of India, mothers will leave a bowl of fresh rice pudding out during Sharad Purnima (full moon festival, late September early October) to absorb goodness, which will be eaten for breakfast or as a snack the next day. At temples, the volunteers make it by first putting ghee in the pot, and only then adding the milk, sugar, rice, saffron, and cardamom. Ghee is THE great purifier, which cleanses everything it touches. Even if a lower caste person made the rice pudding, provided ghee was the first thing in the pot it can be eaten by higher castes as prasadam.

If there are important caste-differences, food cooked with lots of ghee is still acceptable.
Though it helps if the cook is a higher caste than the diner.

[A kshatria or a Brahman is by definition higher than a bania, and many Northwestern Indians take it for granted that they outrank Gujaratis and Southerners. Many Gujus, on the other hand, will not readily eat food prepared outside their caste, unless they are desperate for dhokla. It happens.]

Naturally, ghee is also the favourite Indian unguent. Condition your hair with ghee, for that lustrous sheen. Rub it on rough skin, massage it into your aching back, or drench your hot rice with it. Heck, bathe in it, it's that good. And it feels so niiiiiiice! Mmmmm, smoooooth!

You can even rub a leg of lamb vigorously with ghee and slow slow roast it till the meat falls off the bone. Pakwaan, yaar!


ROTI SHOTI

I bring this up, because Savage Kitten has been reading a book set in India. There are terms in it like sabjiwallah (vegetable seller), dhobi-machine (clothes washer), colony (gated community), wheatish complexion, kindly (please), and others not quite clear.
As well as 'greasy chili pakoras', 'sugary laddoo', 'ghee-drenched sweeties', 'tazi chai garma-garm', 'murghi kabab', 'rotli', 'poori', 'murabbat', 'falooda', 'pista barfi', 'pao bhaji', 'tender goat curry', 'chicken cutlet', 'fried ladies fingers', etcetera.

Being anywhere near her while she reads is interesting - she drools.
When she sleeps, I can hear her mumbling things like "just a little more imli, please", and "why yes, a tall glass of tyre WOULD be nice".

She's been really jonesing for Indian food.
So tonight we are going out to dinner.
They have the best naan at a nearby restaurant.