Four initial tips on meanings and intended readership:1) In the following text, “Desi” is to be understood as a word, prefix, concept, used by Indians in the USA, while in conversation with other Indians in the USA, to address the rest of the Indians and their ways in the USA, except themselves.
2) To read these tips, you don’t have to be a male (or a female either) and you don’t have to be a good cook. Of course, reading of these tips doesn’t assure you of becoming one.
3) These tips are not for the real ABCDs, those second-generation Americans usually with names such as Vijay Iyer (pronounced vee-zhay ayar) or Pallavi Seth (pronounced paa-L-viE saeth). These real ABCDs are of at least one Desi parent, whose Desi parents in turn are now living somewhere happily dead. While their parent(s) went to some god forsaken IITs doing time with lots of dark non-linear PDEs and darker Green’s functions before heading for bright green pastures, most of these ABCDs go to the World Best community college in the USA, doing an exciting art degree with lots of free time to chill-out and feel swamped with work and later, head mostly for selling cigars or parking tickets in airports. They seldom cook so why bother giving them cooking tips.
4) These tips are more for the Aminjakarai Born nevertheless Confused Desis, doing time in the comforting confines of the USA, praying daily to the Green Paper $ God. Of course, it could as well be used by any BBCD, CBCD and DBCD. Only, they should be single, good looking male from Bombay, Calcutta or Delhi, respectively.
Now for the ten culinary tips:
1) If you are about to enter the USA, wondering what to cook that night after you get out of the airport, ask the first customs officer you meet at your port of entry. By now, they are well versed in most of the Desi cuisine.
2) If you are feeling jet-lagged and lazy to cook, tell that to the customs officers plainly. They might even share with you, their garbage for the day. It mostly comprises of Desi cuisine ranging from the vadumanga for Venguttu to the vaerkadalai for Vedavalli, confiscated at gunpoint from maamis and paatis – the would-be toll-free American-baby sitters from Desiland.
3) If you are completely stoned by the air-travel and feel it an ordeal even to speak with any of the blue-tied Homo erectus of the airports, try your luck with the leashed canines. They unleash phenomenal sniffing knowledge about most of the Desiland delights.
4) In the initial USA days, eat rice or wheat with all sorts of spice-powders (podis) smuggled from Desiland, along with pickles, if you were lucky while picking garbage in tip 2. Drink lots of tap water. In the next few weeks, try making anything with combinations of pulses, grains, electric heaters, rice, maize, oven, wheat, barley, salt, tap water, pepper, spice and copper bottomed utensils. Whatever is the result call it dhaal and eat it with friends. Try face powder once a week.
Dho-minute noodle is another staple. Initially you will cook it for two minutes in electric heaters. With the compromising results, you would go and buy a microwave oven. However, realizing the constancy of the result, you would increase the heating time to five minutes. By eating the resulting mash, you would reinvent, like many Desis, the law of the Independence of Noodles Taste to Initial, Final and all of the Intermediate Conditions.
Settle back to heating it to two minutes. Drink lots of mineral water.
5) If you were a pure vegetarian, during the initial USA months (minutes, for some) you would certainly be bored by your above-mentioned cooking limitations. In addition, you would think all the Desi restaurants in your locality are bad, their owners basically culinary-crooks, who hire Desiland road-side dhabha chefs to make all their dishes. Of course, all the non-Desi restaurants are taboo (Were you not an Agnihotram descendent?).
Do not worry. Time will pass and life will be normal again. You will start with the French fries (potato mash, neither completely fried nor remotely Frenched) and eventually dare to swallow the burgers in full. Try Big Macs Buffalo wings (made of chicken, without wings).
Of course, you would presently realize you are no more a pure vegetarian. Gee, were you one ever? (notice the Gee!) Anyway, when you reach Hell, ask Chithraguptan (Chithragupt for North-desis). For now, start calling yourself a Selective Eater, and enjoy eating the Earth.
Go back to the Desi restaurants and you will now love those dhabha-chefed dishes. Alternately, if you are in New York, you can call yourself a Desi Cannibal, proceed into any nearby restaurant, and order the waiter.
6) If you have reached the mental state described in the final paragraph of the previous tip, pat yourself in the back (has anybody actually succeeded doing this?). You are now automatically qualified to join the junior ranks of the Aminjakarai-BCDs, in tip 4.
Relocate yourself in a city or town with a healthy Desi population. New Jersey for instance, where, it seems, non-Desis should have a valid visa for entry. Atlanta is another good place. These cities usually have many Desi restaurants. In Dallas, the land of the Desi-restaurants, you get to hear cooking tips from the Desi Masala Radio, 109 AM (band) around 109 PM.
7) Even after living for months in the USA, if you haven’t reached the mental state at the end of tip 5, don’t worry. By now, USA, the land of the Free, would anyway have made you learn to live by its code: Live on Credit, Die in Debt, Bust the Lease and Rust in Peace.
Get introduced to the Mother, Father, and all or any of the distant relatives of your Desi friends (toll-free American-baby sitters, as indicated earlier). These decent people from Desiland always invite you to your friend’s house, at least once for dinner or lunch. Of course, you have to endure their exciting talk with phrases like Aditi Devo Bhava throughout the eating session. Go with a CD-man.
By the way, given a choice, a) go always for lunch; you might get to stay for dinner too and b) always go on a Friday. Like a camel, you can eat for the weekend.
8) Alternately, if you were invited on a ripe weekday in the above tip, during weekends observe a day of fast at home. Eat in the nearby Desi Hotel(s).
9) Occasionally, you can pull an age-old trick from Desiland, on your neighborhood Desi populace. It works for me. In fact, a variation of this trick, it seems, was practiced even by Saint Tyagaraja, one of the South-Desi Music Trinities. You might actually offer to entertain their kids with music over an invited dinner. Buy a guitar before you go. If you like the food, get to practice with your guitar and try being invited for every weekend.
Else, change neighborhood.
10) If all of the above fail, don’t panic. Eat pizza. Wash it down with Coke.
If you follow all of the above tips in your daily USA life without fail for three years, I reassure (as the title promises) you will be blessed with an eye and mind-pleasing wife of your liking. She shall in time, learn driving and take you around town in your Honda Civic, to shop for your cooking utensils.
