Friday, November 18, 2005

Burn baby burn ...

Several years ago, I wrote an essay on racial profiling that commented at length on the often dire effects such practices have on various ethnic groups. What I neglected to mention, however, is that minorities tend to sometimes profile their own.

For example, if you are Chinese and walk into an Asian restaurant chances are that you won’t be allocated steel cutlery. Instead, it will be assumed that you’re competent in using chopsticks and do not require the service of a knife, fork or spoon in finishing your meal. Similarly speaking, a person from the subcontinent will automatically be assumed as having both a palate and stomach for spice if seated in an Indian restaurant.

A fine example of the above occurred some months ago when I attended an Indian restaurant in Glebe in the company of two friends. The three of us, being Indian in appearance, were presumably assumed to be such by the wait staff who served our food with more than a fair dose of chilli.

To call the dishes hot would be an understatement. Lucifer himself may well have been serving in that kitchen. If so, I assume that he would have either spit into the food or done something infinitely more repugnant. I’ll put speculation to rest for present purposes, in an effort to preserve my sanity and to maintain good taste.

Although I cannot say with any degree of certainty where the chillies in these dishes hailed from, I can take an educated guess. Chances are that they were grown by psychopathic inmates in the confines of some long forgotten jail in deepest darkest Africa. The soil would have been close to infertile, nourished only by the decaying corpses of those buried in shallow graves. These would be the bodies of evil men, mad dog killers whose very presence in the soil sullies the earth. Water would have been scarce, causing some inmates to urinate on these hellish chilli plants at various times of the day. A few may well have passed kidney stones.

Few, if any men, could comment on what it would feel like licking a lollipop composed almost entirely of battery acid. Although I am in the same boat, I can now boast of an experience that is comparable, if not worse in nature. After the very first bite, I began sweating profusely and my mouth felt as if it were on fire. It was as if someone had made a miniature Molotov cocktail using those cute 60ml liquor bottles one sees in hotels, only to throw it into my mouth. Under my breath, I cursed repeatedly at the mothers, grandmothers, wives, sisters, aunts of the chefs in question – wishing every female in their family dead so that further propagation of their kind would cease entirely.

Without the first morsel having even passed down my throat, I began wondering whether I would be defecating blood that evening. My mind was replete with images of internal organs being dissolved on account of whatever demonic ingredient the chef had seen it fit to put in my food. It beggared belief that I would so much as have a bowel left were that food to pass through my intestines. I wanted to ask for water, cold milk, ice cream but could not speak properly because of excessive panting. Although my two friends were similarly troubled, I cared only for my own salvation, knowing full and well that I would drink their blood was it sufficient to quench the heat that plagued me.

Without saying anything, I folded my napkin and walked out … making a beeline for the nearest 7/11. Once there, I purchased 3 iceblocks known as ‘Calyppos’. Even before my money went into the till, I was frantically unwrapping one and shoving it down my throat, frantically chewing on raspberry flavoured ice and not caring an iota for the impending ice cream headache that would eventuate as a result. Appeased somewhat, I walked back into the restaurant and handed the remaining two iceblocks to my friends, both of which accepted with a whispered ‘Thank you’.

Some of the wait staff watched the above events unfold with both amusement and derision. Our obvious discomfort was noted by several other patrons, some of whom asked us openly whether our food was too hot. It was tempting to respond with “WTF do you think?”, but we settled for a courteous “Yes, it is rather spicy for our liking”.

Upon hearing our response, some of the Anglo-Australian customers looked at us with utter disbelief, as if we were all African American men over 6’10 in height who did not play basketball and had no knowledge of the sport. Having born witness to the sight of three curries not enjoying their curries, they approached their own food with marked trepidation. Rather amusingly, one of the wait staff actually explained to onlooking patrons that our dishes had been prepared extra-hot because we looked to be Indian. Uh Huh … and how many Indians enjoy crapping out dissolved internal organs following an evening meal?

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