‘Are you on Twitter?”, I asked someone the other day. “What’s that?”, she asked innocently as she sipped her coffee. “Do you live under the rock?” I asked her a bit amused. Her face flushed with embarrassment. That look stung my heart because it took me back in time to 1998!

That cold January evening, in the little town of Stoke-on-Trent, my husband and I had stepped out for dinner. It was also my maiden trip abroad! The two of us are staunch vegetarians and at that time, I didn’t know about the love affair the English have with the Indian curry.

“I don’t know what we will eat!”, I fretted. “I am sure we will find something,” my husband sounded hopeful, “perhaps a veggie burger or some kind of pizza,” he reassured.

Back then, my knowledge about food was limited to rice and dal (lentils). So, pizza and burger were as alien to me as the foreign land itself. The two new food names only made me anxious. I wanted to find out more but then, we had reached the restaurant.

It was a brown building with a glass door and we were greeted by a man in black clothes and loud music. He led us to a table where my husband’s friends greeted us.

After the initial introduction, I sat nervously wondering what I could eat in that place when someone gave me the menu. There have been very few moments in life when I have read a whole sheet of paper without any understanding. That was one such moment. Exotic words and descriptions filled the menu with colourful pictures. I read anxiously, hoping to spot one known word, one familiar food, just one picture to tell me that I wouldn’t go hungry. After five long minutes, there it was one familiar picture at the end of the sheet under the section — desserts.

“A chocolate brownie for food?”, asked my husband.

“Yes”, I said with a forced smile, after all, I hadn’t found anything else familiar.

“Are you not hungry?”, someone asked.

“Not really!”, I shrugged thinking in my head that the sugar would do the trick.

“You could eat some fries”, the man who sat across the table suggested.

“Fries?”, I asked him thoughtfully. ‘Must be something fried,’ I reckoned in my head.

“French fries,” the man offered helpfully. That was the first time I had heard of that word.

‘Is it OK to ask what it is,’ I wondered, but then, ‘What would those people think of me?’, I worried.

I looked around the table feeling awkward. ‘Maybe I will become a punching bag. Maybe I will be ridiculed’, I was stressed.

But, I couldn’t act like I knew about French fries because, I didn’t have the faintest clue. The place felt quiet and I could sense the person looking straight at me — waiting for my response.

“I am a vegetarian,” I blurted out, “and I don’t know what French fries are!” I finished. That moment, I thought, the entire table was staring at me with shock and all I wanted to do was to run away and hide my face under a blanket and never come out. The next few seconds felt like a very long time. I looked around but nobody had reacted. One person from the far left pulled out a picture for me from the menu and another person sitting next to my husband said, “Oh! You should try it then.”

“It is just potato and I am sure you will like it,” the man across the table said with a smile.

There have been many firsts — but my French fries story never leaves me.

There are many of us who laugh, judge and frown at the ignorant while there are a few who can empathise and take the ignorant under their wings. As my friend looked at me with continued embarrassment, I realised I needed a course correction. It was time for me to switch gears. “Let me tell you about Twitter ...,” I began with a smile. And, some other day, I will tell her my French Fries story.

Sudha Subramanian is an author and freelance writer based in Dubai.