How Indian students eat abroad?
Tags: USA, India, Immigration, Education Reform, Food

So one of my best friends’s from childhood asked me to respond to this question in blog format. So here goes…

Now when we consider India, we are looking at close to one sixth of world’s population, and I always worry if I can do enough justice to adequately represent the population. If we zoom in specifically to students, based on some dated UNESCO statistics, the total number of Indian students overseas increased from 66,713 in 2000 to 3,01,406 in 2016. This translates into 2,34,693 more students overseas in 2016 as compared to that in 2000 — at a robust average annual growth rate of 22% in a span of 16 years. 2020, of course, is different, but 2016–19 may have been comparable is my best guess. So the task at hand is to best represent a few hundred Indian students who brain drain out of the country and to figure out what and how they eat in their miserable lives as students that somehow look beautiful in retrospect when these folks join the workforce.

So, full disclosure, I am not much of a cook. Like I eat burned oats 2 of 7 days a week but cooking oats doesn't count today just as 25¢ cup noodles didn’t count as cooking when I was a grad student. And as such, that doesn’t make me qualified to comment about grad students who can cook. Also, I have trust issues with such individuals. Like all that time spent cooking could be dedicated to why you emigrated in the first place. (I, for instance, am eating a messed up Doordash order as I type this.)

So what did I eat as a student abroad? For the first semester, I drank raw eggs, milk, mixed with expired Bournvita I stocked from CSD canteen. I also had random veggies mixed with masala packs a roommate definitely scammed us about. (Paid like $100 for wholesale masala from a no-name brand that lasted less than six weeks just trying to be a good room-mate in a new country.) Point is, don’t cook with or for someone, you wouldn’t enjoy eating a meal with. Room-mates, like dates, are a hit or miss, school is over before you find the right one. Did I digress again? Sorry.

For lunch, I ate a 6-foot sub, just the cheapest veggie toppings, depending on the level of guilt that came from converting currencies. It also depended on if I was able to grab one of the three “free breakfast” granola bars at the leasing office I had picked over the other cheap student living housing properties around the university. I treated myself to Chipotle on the rare ‘A’s and for festivals, I went to the only Indian Biryani place that dispassionately asked, “Maldmidimspyzi?” and my friends always responded for me to avoid the embarrassment that came from blocking a very long line. “He will have it spicy. To-go. Thanks.” (Maldmidimspyzi? = Mild. Medium. Spicy? (minus spaces or punctuation.))

Dinners, if I got any, was canned black beans sabzi, yogurt, garlic-coconut chutney and half-burnt-semi-cooked kavan rotis. Yes, I burned the rotis. No, I did not cook the sabzi. If we got too creative and my friend, took it easy on the nutrition count we had potato sabzi. For celebrations, we made chat from overpriced packaged food kits. I never felt hungry before grad school and I rarely felt not-hungry in grad life.

Food was big deal. Home-cooked food was a bigger deal. I still am mad at my best friends for not thinking of me for the one impromptu vada paav feast they had one evening just after I left. It has been over 5 years, and I cannot find it in my otherwise-externally-attested-big-heart to forgive them. Some folks made dating choices, friends, room-mates based on who could cook or had a car.

To be fair, there were people, who could cook, and did well at academics, at sports, and were great people, regardless of gender, as there were people who were bad at everything, again, regardless of gender. As an Indian male, you will be called a sexist, for not being able to cook or asking people from the other gender if they can. Truth is cooking and driving are two essential skills to learn when you start living alone. Those are just some things very few people tell you when you hop on a plane to chase your dreams. Cooking (like driving) can be an art, chore, or a passion, regardless of gender. Not everyone is good at it and rarely people from one camp get the other. Not everyone enjoys doing it every day. Not everyone enjoys doing it just for themselves. Nor does anyone feel like doing it when they HAVE to do it. There are people who can cook (or drive) and people who can’t. Fortunately, there are options for those of us who can’t. This wasn’t necessarily the case a few years back. Unless you swallowed 25¢ cup noodles with sugared water just to stare at your muffin top in the years that follow.

So yeah, boys and girls aspiring to study abroad. Learn to cook and drive. Be kind to one another, and pick room-mates based on their hygiene. Check kitchen sinks and bathroom pots before you move-in together and life will be much better. And remember, gender has nothing to do with either skill. A non-cooking Indian male can be a feminist. I know many great women drivers, Indian, Asian. I also know a lot of bad male drivers. Let us break the stereotypes. And while we are at it, here is a product by an Indian male cook married to a great female driver. They can help you with those skills as you plan to head overseas, for “higher studies”.