After finally deciphering and then completing the most challenging assignment I’ve had yet, I grabbed my badge and headed out. I wanted to take a little walk…I deserved to…I was done two hours before I expected to be and I felt a tiny sense of “Victory is mine!” because of it. Since I had skipped lunch, now was the perfect time to get some fresh air (and look for turning leaves). Once outside, I realized that today was the the day for our weekly Farmer’s Market. This made me mindful of how there were a finite number of Thursdays left before the weather would end the charming gathering of, oh, all of a dozen artisans and farmers, and that made me determined to appreciate everything even more. Excessive positivity (and the relief which blissfully arrives after meeting a deadline) inspired my lame ankle to try for whatever spring in my step I could muster. This was going to be nice.
I wasn’t looking for groceries, I was in search of a treat. I immediately recognized one when I saw a baker and his assistant arranging a decadent array of breads, scones, brownies, muffins and best of all…cookies. If I could list “home-made cookies” under my interests, I would. “C is for cookie, that’s good enough for me”, indeed. I spotted apple cinnamon, oatmeal raisin…then a few dozen peanut butter appeared…and then something which I couldn’t visually place, it was darker than the PB and didn’t have nuts dotting its smooth surface like so many allergy-inducing polka dots. Chocolate chip, my favorite hadn’t been unloaded yet. I smiled at the three women who were crowding the stand, impatient for the official start of the market. Oh yes, I’m not joking— you cannot sell anything until it is exactly 3pm and a bell has been rung. It’s a fair and thus lovely thing, apparently.
While the three, a duo and a single milled between me and those delectable baked petit morts, I observed the women as they observed the baker. Two were old enough to be my grandmother, and one of them had beautiful skin, bright reddish-orange lipstick and very pretty hair. She was so arresting, I couldn’t even look at the other two. I was fascinated, thinking silly AnnaThoughts like “I wonder what moisturizer she uses” and “I bet she wears lots of hats”. I was so transfixed, I almost missed what was occurring directly in front of us. Almost. Thanks to being perpetually high-strung, even things in my peripheral vision cause me to swivel and investigate, so that’s what commenced my micro-Monk-like-adventure: the gesture I saw, which I wish I hadn’t, while I was looking elsewhere.
I spied, with my round Southie eyes, the baker’s assistant, dropping one and then another cookie on the ground. He lunged for both, but alas, alack, they were goners. Leaning over, he picked them up with his latex-gloved hands and then walked a few steps back to the van which he had been unloading. After hesitating, he put the two dirty cookies somewhere we couldn’t see and came back out. I resisted the urge to mutter, “I hope those didn’t go right back in the case” mostly because I was too appalled by what the assistant did next—he walked right back to the racks near us and picked up the most beautiful, luscious chocolate chip cookies I’ve ever desired. He started arranging them in the last, forlorn, empty basket. I was astounded.
No one else seemed to mind.
Let me see if I underwear this—this man, who was wearing gloves, apparently for sanitary reasons, dropped food, picked it up and then, without changing gloves, grabbed several “fresh” and so “clean” cookies like it was no big thang?
This would be an opportune time to point out that this farmer’s market occurs on 8th street NW, in Penn Quarter. That’s right, it’s a city street. Just a scant hour before, cars had been rushing over this very spot, dripping oil while perhaps crushing the dead bird I saw a few feet away. This wasn’t indoors. This. was. a. filthy (albeit pretty!) street.
I started to feel a bit anxious. I turned to the woman on my right and asked, sotto voce, “Did he just pick up stuff from the ground and then NOT change his gloves before touching the rest of the cookies?” She looked a bit stunned, then shook it off. “You’re right. That is exactly what he did.” And with a grimace, she turned and walked away, towards the mellow mushroom farmer.
The majority of chocolate chips were still safe. I was trying to stay positive—maybe he was rushed, absent-minded, unintentionally icky…it would occur to him…now…or…erm…now? How about now? Oh, for the love of sugar, please change your nasty #?@%!%& gloves! He walked away and I thought, “Yes! See what happens when you hope for the best?”
The duo who remained between me and the stall started speaking.
“What did I tell you?”
“No, you were so right, these are gorgeous…I can’t wait ‘til 3!”
“I’m not sure what to choose!”
“What about you, dear?”
That last question was meant for me. Now both were looking my way, expectantly. It was kind of them to include me in their conversation. I love how people in cities just do that, they just insert themselves in to your life and then a few seconds later, float out, so naturally. I also love how contrary to popular belief, New Yorkers are NOT MEAN, nooo, people in DC are way ruder, in my experience. But that’s neither here nor fair.
“Well…I know this might sound obnoxious, but…I don’t know if I can buy something after seeing him pick up cookies off the street and then NOT change his gloves.”
“Oh, I hadn’t even thought of that! My dear, you are very observant.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to seem…I don’t know…unreasonable?”
“Not at ALL. You raise a very valid concern. That’s unsanitary handling of food.”
And with that, they both turned back to the baker.
The cookies were glistening in the late afternoon sunlight. How much butter did those babies get battered with? Oh, why, WHY does this guy have to be so naree*? My cookie-lust got the better of me, empowering me to be bold. I’m a consumer! They want me to buy things, so they would want me to be satisfied, right? That’s the whole point of supporting indie everything, you get such kind, personal service, that you feel extra good when you walk out with your purchase. As long as I’m polite, a question is perfectly acceptable. If that’s all it takes to get a glove change…and thus a clean cookie…
“Excuse me, sir?”
“Yes?” He was ready for my question. He had the slightest accent and he looked and sounded a bit like the “pool boy” in Legally Blonde. You know, the one who was all…”Don’t you go tapping your last season Prada shoes at me missy” or similar. No? Didn’t watch it? Fine, let’s move on.
“Did two cookies drop on the ground?”
“Yes, but I threw them away. There’s trash in the truck.” He looked at me like, “come on, you should know better…of course I threw them out!”
“Oh, but…didn’t you…pick them up while wearing…those gloves?” I gestured towards his hands, each of which were holding 4-5 now-tainted cookies.
The smile immediately disappeared from his face. In fact, he was scowling. The epiphany had smacked him, all oops upside his head, like.
“Look, I touch the cookies, not the road!”
I nodded. “Thank you so much.”
I don’t know how he had magically avoided asphalt and thus preserved the integrity of his food-handling equipment, but I felt that it was appropriate to leave, since a line was forming for all the baked goodness.
Glum, I wandered past organic cheese samples, dried apple rings and a mini-orchid shop, over to the woman who always brings such gorgeous flowers to market. I had a question for her, about a certain…green, plant-y thing which I didn’t know the official name for. Since they were in the last few bouquets I had been given, everyone expected me to know what they were called. I’m asking for it; they are eye-catching. On Fridays, when I take the vase home (they last for over a week!) on the metro and while walking, I constantly hear “What ARE those?”
I was about to pose my question, since she had finished with an actual customer, when the two cookie ladies “cut in line”.
“Do you have dahlias?”, one asked.
The other older woman, the one who hadn’t spoken to me was eyeing me as she slowly, sensuously bit in to a chocolate chip circle of bliss. I know, she wasn’t doing it just to make me feel bad, but that was obviously the end effect.
This was really starting to bug me. I started wishing I was more “chill” about such things, her cookie looked THAT fantastic. I’m famous for washing my hands before I touch food, after I touch my laptop, upon re-entering the house, after I take off my shoes in the hallway…any time that they might be dirty. I have no more control over such rituals than I do over my obsession for 120 Minutes-era music. No cookie for me.
Here, have some context, it’s free today: I don’t think this is anything but familial myth-making, but allegedly, my first word was “chee-dirty!”. Does that count as a word? Whatevs, I grew up with typical, anal-retentive, paranoid brown parents. Which is not to say that I think Desis are somehow cleaner than everyone else, rather that they are more consumed with the concept than some.
After college, my two prospective Asian roommates (Chinese and half-Japanese, respectively) became probable and not possible roomies when I kicked off my shoes without being told, before touring the white carpeted apartment (what genius installs white rugs in a college apartment complex? Something about the G-line makes people wacky, I tell you.) Apparently, every other interested party had just stumbled on in; half had observed all the shoes by the door and asked about it…only to then strut right past, shoes still on.
See? And some of you think we have practically nothing in common with “real” Asians. ;)
[Aside: as if that last sentence wasn’t incendiary enough, I’ve got more flame bait for ya. I recall a very controversial early-early-morning breakfast, i.e. in the wee hours, after a night of partying, which was heated because the question stupidly being considered by several people in various stages of intoxication was, “Were South Indians cleaner than North Indians?”. We were all referencing our parents in our arguments for and against, as if we were still infants who hadn’t realized that we weren’t physically attached to them. Later, a Guju gf confided to me that she felt she had more in common with Southies, and not just because a Tamil family friend had taught her Mother how to make fantastic sambar…”No, it’s the cleanliness thing. I feel like with North Indians, the shoe thing is optional. My house? Not optional. Yours too, right??” Right. “But…aren’t you technically North Indian??”, I asked. She arched her back, squared her shoulders and sniffed at me. “I most certainly am not. I am Gujarati.”]
Back to the story within a story. So, after hearing about my possible first word(s), you won’t be surprised to hear about the time when I was five and my sister, in her stroller, had dropped her bottle on the sidewalk, in San Francisco. “Chee!” my mother hissed, grabbing it and swinging it above my baby sister’s dimpled, grasping hands. We were near the park, so it wasn’t so odd that we almost immediately encountered another stroller. That baby’s pacifier fell out, and bounced on the ground, twice. That mother stopped, shrugged, picked it up, wiped it on the back of her pants and popped it right back in her baby’s waiting mouth. I still remember the disgusted look on my mom’s face. “Why are Americans so dirty?” she muttered in Malayalam.
“Aren’t we Americans?”
“Where is your brain and smart mouth when Americans ask you that? You just stare at them, like you are a dumb. Of course we are. But we are clean ones.”
Beyond the fact that “Americans” seemed to be code for white people, I was perplexed by this new designation of “clean” vs. “dirty” Americans.
When I was growing up, there was no five-second rule; if it dropped, it got tossed, and yes, a “Chee! Dirty!” was usually uttered by someone in the vicinity, to commemorate the fallen.
Twenty-seven years after a scolding on a San Francisco sidewalk, my phone rang, on a street 3,000 miles from fog, hills and proper sourdough bread. I answered. It was my best friend.
“You have good timing!”
“Not really. You’re just uber-predictable. I knew you’d be free for a bit.”
“Hey…can I ask you if I overreacted to something?”
“hold on…let me clear my throat…I’ve got Dionne Warwick on the brain…”
I told her everything (obviously with less punctuation or consideration for detail) and by the time I got to the part where the assistant had returned from tossing the dirty cookies, only to pick up the innocent choc-
“GASP! NO!! That is NASTY. And on a freaking city street! Eww, eww, eww, eww, ewww.”
“Oh…wow. Thanks. I thought that maybe I was the weird one, since the other people weren’t bothered, but you caught it before I could even-”
“NO! Who does that? I mean, it’s one thing when you’re in a restaurant, I’ll grant you that you have no knowledge of what’s going on in the kitchen, etcetera…but to see it first-hand…I wouldn’t have been able to eat it, either. You’re not veird.”
I sighed with relief as I contemplated the odd mish-mash of feelings within. There are moments when I just feel more desi than I usually do, or when I’m reminded that I was raised differently. I’m not talking about being othered by others, I mean little eurekas of my own, about something just like this. Often, when I question myself about a reaction to something, the answer will float to my surface like one of Razib’s old comedic comments…
…Brown.”
“Gawd, why do you tell me this stuff? It’s like the time that guy at Au Bon Pain dropped all those bagels on the ground, made eye contact with you and STILL put them out to be sold. I couldn’t eat bagels for like, a year. Who are these narees?”
“I think they’re a tiny, indie…not exactly a storefront-in-dc type of establishment.”
“Good.”
“Yes. Your Marvelous Market addiction can continue, in peace.”
“Isn’t it amazing?”, she asked.
“What?”
“The ridiculously different standards we have about cleanliness, compared to others.”
Ah, there. I was not alone. Perhaps we never are, despite how we feel.
“Amazing and inconvenient”, I said. “My attempt at cookie-ing uncovered an…inconvenient truth.”
“That your parents raised you right?”
“Yeeeeah, let’s go with that one.”
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Naree…is such a brilliant Malayalam word. It encompasses so much in its two potent syllables; it’s the epitome of “Chee! Dirty!”-osity. It’s one of the examples I think of when our seemingly-stodgy-about-certain-things Amitabh rails about the loss of languages and how that’s a tragedy. He is right to rail, because it is tragic, because words are magical, potent, precious. There are some things I just can’t say precisely, in English, and I’m not even THAT fluent in Malayalam; there are words (beyond kundi, silly) which are perfect for what I am thinking, even if they are in the “wrong” language, and those are the only words which my mind can or will summon, in that moment.
As for what “naree” means…well, I was never one of those who liked having a glossary in the back of a mehndi book; I visibly grimace when I see such things, unless it’s ironic, in which case the most annoying song ever gets stuck in my head.
I always thought that if you were a skilled enough writer, a strange word could be understood via context. I am no “skilled” anything, but this is one of the guidelines I attempt to consider when I am writing, “does this sentence and this sentence reveal what ‘kundi’ means, to a non-Mal speaker, in this paragraph?”
