City Culture – Delhi’s Table Manners, Kasturba Gandhi Marg
Dining rituals.
[Text and photos by Mayank Austen Soofi]
The delicious food was being served free to passers-by in honor of goddess Mata Rani. The road-side bhandara counter had large cauldrons filled with aloo subzi and deep-fried pooris.
One afternoon The Delhi Walla witnessed the city’s famed table manners. There was a long queue of people leading to the bhandara. They were mostly men. The meal was being served on white Styrofoam plates. The diners were enjoying their meals al-fresco—right there on the pavement. Some were eating alone, others were in groups. It looked like a buffet party scene.
Most people were throwing away the used plates as well as the plastic water glasses on the lane itself. The organizers had not made any visible arrangement for a swift disposal of the crockery. In no time a small hill of unused Styrofoam plates came up around a tree. Some used plates also lay under green hedges.
Meanwhile, the queue for the delicious subzi and poori continued to grow long.
Eat and throw
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Come on! Cut them some slack. They are just being really good Hindus.
You mean they are being GOOD Hindus … by not openly engaging in public ANIMAL CRUELTY by teaching their young KIDS HOT TO SLAUGHTER GOATS ON THE STREETS? This bad civic sense of eaters has got nothing to do with religion, at least not exclusive to any religion in India. Terrorism has no religion? And religion-based free food kitchens are somehow made responsible for the bad civic sense of eaters who happen to be from ALL RELIGIONS including from the ReallyJUNK OF PIECE of global bloody mayhem.
Shows lack of good planning by the organizers. Though all organized religions are tools of mass control through unscientific superstition. Hinduism teaches the followers to question (no blind followership, no concept of blasphemy, etc), to not only worship the humanity but also worship the ecology and environment. These organizer failed to practice teaching of Hinduism here. Shameful sight. Amazing how acceptable poor sanitation habits have become to the people.
You forgot VEGETARIANISM.Since Hindus are vegetarians and worship humanity unconditionally, they are incapable of cruelty and mass-murder. And let’s not be too hard on the organizers there. Most Hindus are sorta guilty of ignoring their fine Dharma Shaastras:
“Garlic, leeks and onions, mushrooms and (all plants), springing from impure (substances), are unfit to be eaten by twice-born men.”- Manusmriti, verse 5, chapter 5
Now this verse was instrumental in my ‘deconversion’ from caste Hinduism because I loveeeeee garlic bread with a side of onion rings and mushroom dip. I love these more than Nirvaana itself.