The All-Day Eatathon

MANGALORE, KARNATAKA - 18th November 2009

First things first - thank you for all the texts, phone calls and facebook messages for my birthday yesterday; a special mention must go to "Young Pavlova", who managed to achieve all of the above inside the space of 4 and a half minutes.

Those of you lucky enough to catch my facebook status yesterday would have seen something along the lines of "Dean is in the middle of an involuntary all-day eatathon". I feel it is something worth expanding upon, as the involuntary nature of it is fairly integral to any proper description of life in Mangalore.

As a general rule, life in Mangalore revolves around 3 things - breakfast, lunch, and dinner. If you're a local, various other things probably also feature, but the above are the Trinity of the God that is food. And, funnily enough, it is never more apparent than when a visitor arrives in town.

A visitor in the house means even more food than usual. If 4 people are eating, the food on the table should - as a conservative estimate - be enough to feed about 15, or else there's not enough prepared. And, in order to make the maths work, each of the 4 will be expected to eat the quantity of 4 normal people. I've already mentioned that the concept of a "light lunch" has yet to come arrive in Mangalore - if you're a guest in a house a third helping is nothing short of compulsory. You'd sooner be castrated than be allowed to finish without taking a second.

Over the years, I've been known to somewhat exaggerate in order to make a point; indeed the term "a Deanism" (defined roughly as "a statement that is so confidently uttered that it is assumed true, but is in fact either partially or wholly made up") had a brief foray into popular usage during my second year of university. However, it is safe to say that on this occasion the level of exaggeration is low-to-medium - as any "Mangy" will testify.

Occasionally though, a perfect storm of factors come together to create a near-apocalyptic level of compulsory food intake. Such an occasion took place on the 17th November 2009, as my birthday combined with a "Last Supper" in light of my impending departure from Mangalore. To put this in brutal terms, the usual "you've-got-to-eat-more-because-you're-on-holiday" orders were combined with a celebratory "it's-your-birthday-therefore-you-have-to-eat-more" special, itself conversely punctuated by the more sombre "you're-leaving-in-two-days-so-you're-got-to-savour-the-food" line of argument. Thus, the usual 3-Feasts-in-a-Day consumption model was thrown out the window, instead replaced with a Perpetual-Eating model that follows the rule "any second you're not eating is a second wasted".

So, I woke up to my favourite Indian breakfast - a veritable mountain of "panpalehs" (see left - a.k.a. "neer dosa") - sort of like pancakes but with a rice-batter, and with a texture of lace. After that came a round of fruit (sweet limes, plantains), soon followed by a round of sweets - jalebis, mithai ladoos, chocolates and more (click for images).

Then, one by one various relatives/friends invariably drop by the house to wish you for your birthday. As is customary, they are offered a tray full of the above sweets, and of course the birthday boy is obliged to match whatever anyone else is eating pound-for-pound. At some stage the eating blends into lunch - the usual table full, this time with two meat curries, one vegetable curry, some fried chicken, two types of rice, appams (something like giant rice chappattis), and probably more. Lunch is followed by more fruit and more sweets, and the latter then runs through to evening, when the real feast happens (as all the family comes together in celebration). So add to the mix chinese fried rice, manchurian-style chicken drumsticks, another chicken curry... and then of course birthday cake afterward.

It goes without saying that, although still a highly trained athlete, I am no longer quite in the shape I was after 4 weeks of daily runs (nothing like the boredom of revision to spur on exercise!). But don't fret - my grandma assures me that "it doesn't matter - you're on holiday!"