All you can eat in two spoonfuls

Lunch at the Jeet India buffet

Yellow Springs, Ohio 9.9.16

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Erasure 

In the middle of dinner, it occurs to me how much I wish I could redo my first time, have it be with someone special, someone sweet. I would love for the memory to have the golden tint of fondness, the sweet taste of sentimentality. Instead it tastes beige, and flat, like old carpet.

Instead it was with him, a misogynistic narcissist who loved to gaslight and eat Indian food. I would have tasted the Northern Indian curries without him someday in my near future. He was just the first in line to bring it up.

Fortunately, when I think back on my first time my mind does not go directly to his pretentious conversation, but to the colors and the smells of the Jeet India lunch buffet. While his self-applauding words were forgettable and tiresome, my first tastes of vegetable samosa, poori, and mater paneer stand out with memorable flavor.

I can use the sensory experience of Northern Indian food to gradually erase him from the picture entirely. If I begin imagining his stocky, shuffling strut towards the buffet line, I can replace it with the vivid memory of my own initial approach, examining the vessels available for my self-serving, anticipating the need for a tiny bowl to carry gulab jamun and kheer.

Should I hear his voice making judgements in between chews, I can drown it out by drinking in my own vibrantly orange perspectives and the sweet juices of my mango lassi.

When his face enters my mind, I can take a bite of aloo choley and know that I will walk away and refill my plate without him.

Chill

My new group of friends were laid back, because they smoked pot. They had pool parties and drank beers. They invited me to skinny dip and passed me bowls to smoke from.

I was not good at being high, but she was. She was was beautiful and calm, with sleepy eyes, tattoos and piercings, and her own weed and her own bowl to smoke it in. She was exactly the type of chill I strove to be, quiet and artistic, adorned in low-rise bell-bottom jeans and gemstone jewelry.

The moment we discovered our mutual obsession with Jeet India, we set a date for lunch. She drove us the 21 miles from our small city to the restaurant in her little car, each of us ashing our cigarettes into the center console to the tune of Jerry Garcia. I looked out the window and performed a ritual I had done many times before and would do many more times to come — I imagined the potential of our budding friendship. There we were, lounging under the tapestries in her room with incense lit, listening to music and talking trash over a joint. And later, taking long hikes with our notebooks and beers in hand to write and paint in the woods.

At Jeet, we filled out plates with vegetarian curries. I watched her dip huge pieces of naan into pools of saag paneer for three servings straight. There was a pause and a tiny fourth serving. A pause and a plastic bowl of mango ice cream. I marveled at her flat belly and her massive appetite. 

On the car ride home, I did my best to embody the chill I wanted to be, and the stomach full of rice helped. There was more music on the stereo, more cigarettes in the ashtray, more idle staring out the window. 

My mom always said I was good at making friends, and of all the biased encouragement she gave me that one was easily the most suspect. Observing came naturally, engaging didn’t. I could never bring to fruition this image of laid back intimacy surrounded by tie-dye and colored pencils. Instead, all of our future encounters were left to the whim of coincidence, a mechanism that had the ability to bring everyone to the same back yard to indulge in the same languid summer nothingness. 

Thanks for reading,

Katya

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