Over last Sunday’s day trip, we were eating at a restaurant called ‘Mango Tree’ and my friend ordered a South Indian Thali which usually looks something like this:

So a thali is basically rice + chapatti + papad + 4 to 5 curries (and it’s usually vegetarian) and served on a huge metal plate. The point is for you to mix in the curry with the rice so that all the flavours mix and explode in your mouth. I was expecting my friend to pick up the spoon and fork and eat with the utensils but he brushed them aside and started mixing the rice with his hands. I know it shouldn’t come as something unexpected, since I eat lunch everyday with my hands too but I don’t touch the rice (personal preference) so seeing him mix the rice up with his fingers and deftly pushing the food into his mouth was quite unexpected. Afterwards I learnt that he was used to it because he ate both lunch and dinner with his hands. He is staying at a Paying Guest accommodation (where a $ seeking landlord buys a house and then sublets his house to many different tenants. In fact I’m staying a one too.)

His roommates are two nice guys from Manipur, a Northeastern state that is near the India-Myanmar border, and so they look Burmese. He was telling us how his roommates would cook dinner for him and they would eat together at 11.30 pm because they worked the 6-11pm shift at KFC and so by the time they got home and cooked it would be rather late but they would still ask him to eat together. They ate with their hands and so over time, my friend picked it up too. These guys would sometimes bring home chicken from KFC and share it with my friend, and that chicken was part of the staff meal that they are allocated. They are earning a pittance (Rs 5,000 = SGD 110 a month) and yet they were willing to share whatever little they had. I look myself and feel ashamed.

 I have so much and yet I seek more, and sharing? What sharing?