powder and goopy stuff

The other night some of my hosts and I made some rounds giving out mangoes to a few relatives and I got to try to apply my first bindi. Our first and last families to host us would bring out a little metal tray with a cup of red powder in it and I guess you're supposed to dip a finger in and skillfully poke your forehead. We also got some jasmine flowers to put in our hair, which also excited me since I've seen lots of Indian women walking around wearing them. The flowers were small, white and fragrant, so it was fun for me to smell like fresh flowers. But, back to what I meant to blog about, which is the bindi itself. It's actually much trickier than it sounds. Both times I had trouble getting the powder onto my finger tip, since I either had no powder, or way too much. I'd dip my finger in the cup, scrape my fingertip against the edge when I had a crooked, thick chunk of powder that would surely look disastrous if I tried to apply it and then see that I would then have no powder whatsoever on my finger. Swathi helped me the first time by guiding my decently powdered finger to my forehead so it wouldn't look sad and crooked, although I still fretted if it was symmetrical or too light/dark. The second time, my host seemed to pity my scraping/dipping dance and finally just did it for me, giving me the large, obvious pat of a bindi that I was hoping for. I took a picture of myself before I washed it off when I got home, so if you're my facebook friend you can definitely expect to see it soon.

I finally started to eat food with my right hand, people do in India, so I'm proud of myself. All of these consecutive occasions were just out of necessity, since the people feeding me just didn't give me any utensils. I do admit though, I was later offered a spoon/fork in said occasions, but by then the damage was done and I was already eating, anyway. One of the families we visited last night served me a chapati with a sweet paste (I forgot the name of this dish) and since the chapati was soft, it was easy to tear with one hand, unlike the stiff, fresh-off-the-stove ones I previously struggled with. The filling had a crumbly consistency, so it sort of fell apart, but I would still say I did a decent job. The last two times were today when I had some idli (or is it dhosas?) with some chutney (which I found out the hard way that it had nuts in it) and then some rice and sambar. The former wasn't too bad, but the latter made me a bit nervous since the rice mixed with sambar looked like tricky business. I've seen Indian people expertly mix their rice with yogurt or whatever sauce they're using like pros; it's like a second nature to them. They just know how to manipulate the rice to get it to the right consistency and then form it in their fingers to eat in one fell swoop. Despite my fears, I think I was able to manage in a way that didn't get me on the radar unless one was watching me carefully and I don't think I came off as much of a sloppy foreigner as I feared. I managed to feed myself, and no one got hurt.

Today was an awesome day, but my arms hurt and there's a Kannada movie playing in the other room and watermelon on the table with my name on it so that will have to wait for tomorrow.