Guest Post by Hima Joshi
Being 5’2” has paid off at times. “When?” you ask.
When traveling by plane
When I met soprano Hima Joshi (also 5’2”) in the front row of La Jolla Symphony Chorus. Wow, can this woman sing! And she tells a witty story.
Check out Hima's podcast "Taking a Bite with Princess Snow Brown"
on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
Thick Skin
by Hima Joshi
As I watched two boys in my grade-school class throw the familiar sphere back and forth to each other, I was amazed at how well it sailed through the air. It was surprisingly compact and aerodynamic. Or maybe the boys throwing it had really good arms. Regardless, these thoughts about the smooth trajectory of my mom’s homemade dessert distracted me from what was turning out to be a rough day.
If I had wondered then, as I do now, about the history of throwing food, I would have needed to leverage my Dewey Decimal skills in the card catalog at the school library. Thankfully, now I have Google…Apparently, eggs and tomatoes have been the projectiles of choice in many cultures. They are easy to throw. And just beyond their thin skins are a gooey mess. Protesters in Europe have recently taken to throwing food at priceless works of art. Their reason for splashing Van Gogh’s Sunflowers with tomato soup? To raise awareness of the effects of climate change on our ability to grow crops.
However, these boys in my class did not appear to be engaging in a protest. As they gently tossed the sphere into each other’s hands, the boys directed their glances at me, and my face stung as if I had been struck.
The sphere that they tossed was nothing like a tomato or an egg. It was the size of a golf ball, and made out of ingredients that were different…Cream of wheat, sugar, almonds, saffron…Different. How many times had I heard that word come out of my teachers’ and classmates’ mouths as their taste buds tried to make sense of the ethnically-laced concoctions that I had proudly offered them? “Hmmm…Oh, that’s different.” I did feel sorry for them. I mean, I had them backed into a corner. They were feeling watched, they did not want to be rude, and they had to say something. Something true, but polite. Different was probably the best choice of words. As a kid who was born and raised in the USA, I did not disagree with them. Indian desserts really are quite different from the cake and ice cream that we Americans have learned to love.
There would always be that moment in the evening at home when I felt backed into a corner. “Yes, they liked it,” I would say to my mother, who eagerly awaited the news about how her homemade dessert had been received at school. She is pretty tough, my mom. She would not have flinched if I had told her that the reception was lukewarm. But I never had the heart to be completely honest.
On this day, however, these particular kids crossed the line between indifference and rudeness. By the time I saw them playing catch, I had already heard the jokes and quips. And I was kind of done. So, the sight of one of my mom’s ladoos going back and forth from hand to hand, then landing on the ground, fragmenting into cream-of-wheat crumbles, and sending fragrant saffron mixing into the damp dirt, made me blink extra fast to push back my tears.
The boys saw the tears and quickly apologized. They did not understand that I was not crying for myself. My mom stayed up late and got up early to cook, then neatly packaged her sweets into containers, and sent me off to school for our bake sale…and she then worked a full day at the clinic. And this time, it really did not seem worth it. Those kids did not deserve her love.
And what about the neighbor my dad used to tell me about? The kid who lived next door to him in India when he was a child? The one who cried because he did not have milk to drink? And that is why we always finish our milk. That is why we do not waste food. What about that kid? How would he have felt watching these boys throw ladoos?
When I went home that day, I told my mom about the jokes, the boys playing catch with the ladoos, and my tears. I did not explain why I had cried. I did not have the words, and somehow, I thought she would know.
“You…cried?” she asked. “You cried about that?” Her expression was incredulous, almost derisive, as if to say, “You are much weaker than I thought. This is not worth crying about.”
