When I was a child, I remember the grimace on my uncle’s face when one of my sticky little cousins drank from his can of soda. He announced that he could no longer drink it because another person’s saliva had touched it. While no one said the words “germaphobe weirdo” out loud, we were all thinking it. Our shock increased as he abandoned his old can for a fresh one, because in the early 1990s wastage was serious – fizzy drinks were a treat and we had whatever the opposite was to the “don’t worry if you can’t finish that, darling” school of parenting.
Fast forward 35 years, and I’ve realised I am now that uncle. And not just drinks – this extends to food too. This may come as a surprise to some people, given that I’m Indian and sharing food is a fundamental pillar of who we are. But at home, we serve our food in giant pots, family style. There’s a spoon for every dish, and that kind of sharing is perfectly fine. There is no double-dipping because there are unspoken rules of engagement. What is not perfectly fine, however, is when different cultures come together, and someone thinks it is OK to put the spoon that was in their gob into the main pot, or use it to scoop something from another person’s plate.
