buddha's delight

ione’s pediatrician is an old-school doctor, by new york standards anyway. she’s not part of a group practice and has been flying solo for about 18 years. she gives her cell phone number out to her patients and makes nights and weekends appointments.

on our first visit, she went out of her way to tell us she has an indian daughter-in-law. i thought it was a bit odd but daphne, being the more generous soul, thought she was just being chatty and friendly. later, when we asked her what kind of food daphne should avoid while breastfeeding so not to upset ione’s still delicate stomach, she said without hesitation, “garlic, onion, and curry”.

at first it sounded sensible since we had a sleepless night after a garlicky pasta dinner. but then i started to wonder if breastfeeding moms in, say, india or italy would have the same food problems. there’s probably not an absolute; it’s very likely in any crowd there would be those who just couldn’t stomach something others enjoy. but i would be surprised if pediatricians in bangalore or rimini offer their patients the same blanket diet advice.

i’m not interested in judging ione’s pediatrician in any way but the encounter reminds me of other instances of cultural bias. you know how people sometimes turn down a dinner invitation because they had the same kind of food for lunch? “i had chinese for lunch already,” they would say, as if it’s understood eating chinese food more than once a day gets you a foot in the early grave. i wonder how i lived all those years in taiwan, having "flied lice" everyday.

it also reminds me when i was freelancing for the now defunct a magazine, the self-styled “inside asian america” monthly, i was asked to contribute to what sounded like a cool book project, “eastern standard time: a guide to asian influence on american culture from astro boy to zen buddhism”. then i learned that along with the usual suspects like anime/manga and hong kong cinema, there will be entries like yo-yo ma. since for the life of me i couldn’t figure out what yo-yo ma being chinese has to do with the music he plays, i decided it's probably out of my league.

to the south of where i live is “curry hill”, a few square blocks around the 28th street subway station known for its dense stretch of indian and pakistani eateries and groceries. at lunch and dinner, there is usually a school of hungry and homesick cabbies circling the joints.

i caught a cab coming out of kalustyan’s the other day. i was feeling flushed, having just sprung for a stray piece of their insanely good lebanese pistachio baklava. as we sped downtown, the driver popped in a tape and the zigzagging melodies, chattering tablas, and undulating beats of old-school bollywood rolled from the speakers. the driver told me he made the tape a long time ago.

“when i first moved here i liked this music,” he said, “but then i started liking american music.”

“but now i like it again,” he added.

time-stretching and perspective–swapping, intentional or not, are common motifs in contemporary asian music. appropriately, the community experience of the uk’s large immigrant population is a fertile inubator for musical exploration and cross-pollination. multi-cultural “it” girl m.i.a. and her philly-based partner-in-crime diplo freely curried electronic cadences and served them up, like “pop” from the "piracy funds terrorism vol.1" mixtape (2004), with a dollop of sass. as someone often at risk of being too geeky about his music, nitin sawhney lets loose, or rather, lets free form five loose on his signature track “homelands”, and unleashes a sublime blend of broken beats, flamenco guitar, and bollywood-style chorus (v2, 2004).

space-time more removed but no less a kin in sensibility, the prolific composer illayaraja had scored more than 700 tamil flicks to date. “ponmeni uruguthe” from 1982’s “moonram pirai” is remarkable for the ease with which it traverses time, genres, and cultures, and the occasional flashes of pop transcendence. it was reissued by qdk records in 1999 on the “doob doob o’rama” compilation with the track name misspelled.

Posted by cellpharmer at April 15, 2005 10:25 AM