A veil for my hand

Notes on why I eat with a spoon but would rather not

A full plate. That day, it’s dal, rice and hand-mashed avocado. I pick up my spoon, take a spoonful of dal, it’s still steaming. I take a bit of rice in the same spoon, and eat it. I don’t like to mix the two right at the start, and so this is how I continue. It’s too hot, it slightly burns my tongue. So I take another bite, blow on it, have it again. I put my spoon down and before I know it, my fingers are bringing me the next bite. At the perfect temperature. I continue the rest of my meal with my spoon abandoned on one side of my plate. I take the avocado and mix it with a bit of rice. I imagine it could turn into a rice ball. A thought that the spoon can’t give me. Somehow, it tastes different.

I don’t know how and I don’t know when I started to enjoy getting my fingers onto my plate so much. If I’m eating roti and subzi, it’s obvious I should be using my hands. There, the roti is the tool. It gathers the subzi, and our hands are merely there to give motor support. With dal and rice there is no such tool. Both need support to be gathered, and I guess that’s why the spoon gets to be the right tool. But that narrative strips hands down to tools. Yes, they gather the bite and carry it to our mouths. But the texture is right there, on our fingertips. The temperature, the smoothness, the graininess, the crumbs. The warmth of the hand in stark contrast with the cold metal.

This summer, I ate mangoes after two years. I had to avoid them last season due to a stomach infection, and so I was gonna devour them as much as I could this season. In every possible way. I’d take them on the side of my plate every day during lunch and eat them with my bare hands. I couldn’t understand the need for a fork or a spoon because I was getting my hands in the plate anyway. The slippery texture, the one I didn’t wanna reserve just for my tongue, was perfect. My hands filled with mango juice and I licked it right off my fingers. It was a different kind of pleasure. Like the wait was worth it. My mouth went all yellow-orange and I completely gave in to it. When I cut mangoes, the same thing happens. The slippery texture won’t let me grip it enough to make cuts, and in its resistance to be held, the mango bleeds yellow all over my fingers and palms.

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I remember as a child, whenever I ate Cheetos, Doritos, or Kurkure, my fingers would be all red-yellow, and I’d lick them clean afterwards. It’s a whole experience: the mango’s slip, the moisture that rice holds, the steam that dal traps, the buttery avocado, the crumbs on bread.

This one evening, my mom came to me while I was sitting on the sofa, her hands tucked behind her back. She asked me to close my eyes, and I hesitated. I knew she was cooking something. I could smell it. I could hear her in the kitchen. I could see her working. I just didn’t know what she made, and I was skeptical about the ingredients. Still, I closed my eyes because her face was brimming with excitement. She couldn’t wait for me to try it. She asked me to open my mouth. She fed me with her bare hands what she made with her bare hands. And I know it would taste different if I tried it with a spoon, or even my own hands. Even if someone followed her exact recipe, it would be different because the hands would change. I don’t know how to explain that. It’s something so unique and close to a person, it feels intimate to share.

When I’m sick and my mom’s around, she always offers to feed me. Even at this age. It’s an unsaid acceptance that when she feeds me, my lost appetite comes back. When I was younger and visited my cousins, we’d all sit together for meals. Even when our plates held the same dishes, they never looked alike. Someone mixed everything together at the start. Someone saved the crispiest bite for the end. Someone ate all the vegetables first. By the time we were done, it felt like we’d eaten entirely different meals. So when someone feeds you from their plate, especially with their hands, they’ve tuned the bite to their own ratios. It’s a different way of giving, of sharing something we treat as default. Along with food, they feed you their warmth, their palate.

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I don’t know if I would be this indulgent in public though. Would I “dirty” my hands so much? I flinch at the thought of using my hands in restaurants or at other people’s places. In public, I can only use tools to eat. Not something that makes me feel warm and vulnerable. I hold up the spoon as a veil for my hands so none of the food bleeds onto them. They seem to only be allowed as a motor function, not the hands that feed and warm. Every time I eat outside my home, my hand yearns to reach for my mouth and it does. When I realise, I get conscious of every grain of rice and gravy on my fingers. I look around and wipe my hands quickly with a napkin. Quietly, the veil comes back on.

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