Welcome to Eat With Your Hands

Move over thinking hats, this is a job for wet naps

I remember watching my mom eat rice and curry with her hands when I was little. My parents worked a lot, and we didn’t have much contact with the South Asian community, so she was the only person I had ever seen eat that way. There was a seamless grace to the way her hands moved. As time went on, she gradually did this less and less, until it became a distant memory. My parents’ upbringing is sort of unusual for South Asian immigrants; they both grew up in Colombo speaking English as their first language. In fact, my mother took elocution classes as a child and has a substantially better English vocabulary than the average American. So their early years were a mixture of British and Sri Lankan traditions. Although silverware was not a rarity in my mother’s household growing up, centuries of history and culture often made eating with your hands the natural choice.

I had been to Sri Lanka a couple times with my parents and brother as a child, but I visited my extended family as an adult for the first time in 2016. I was shown the vibrant hospitality of Sri Lankan culture and I also had the delight of eating almost every meal utensil-free for a week. It felt so pure and freeing, and I marveled at the way the tips of my nails were stained by turmeric. I also got laughed at by family members for the apparently awkward rookie movements of my fingers. I found it interesting that this act, seen by so many as dirty and uncivilized, actually involves technique and practice. It’s also easy for many to overlook that handwashing takes place before and after eating, either at a sink or with a bowl of water placed at the table.

Without realizing it, over the last few years I have developed a habit of shirking utensils with certain foods. I’m not sure why. Sometimes it just feels natural, sometimes it feels like a punk rock middle finger to those who have dictated what it means to be civilized. I am reminded of the hedonistic excess with which food was portrayed in Daisies, the iconic Vera Chytilova film that skewered restrictive and patriarchal ideas of what a woman should be. I am also reminded of the transcendent peace of walking barefoot on grass.

My research into the history of eating with your hands led me to studies that found people report a greater sense of satisfaction when utensils are removed from the equation. So this behavior, which western colonizers deemed uncouth and attempted to eradicate, is actually capable of making a meal even more enjoyable. Some Ayurvedic teachings even state that the nerve endings are stimulated by touching the food.

As I have gotten older, the nuances of cultural genocide and the consequences of colonialism have become more clear to me. Like many members of the diaspora who live far from their parents’ home, it is important to me to keep traditions alive. I chose to name this place Eat With Your Hands as a celebration of things that were once branded as less than, but upon reexamination have been illuminated as nuanced, fascinating, and perfectly justified in existing the way they do.

Eat With Your Hands is a reminder to question the rules and ask yourself who the tastemakers work for. But above all, to show how big you can make your world when you quiet the impulse to judge and instead, listen to people who are different from you.