The other day, a friend lunching with me in a mid-level restaurant found hair in his food bowl. He yelled at the waiter standing nearby. While other diners looked at us with surprise wanting to know what had gone wrong the waiter rushed towards us. "Yes Sir?" he queried.

"What's this?" asked my friend angrily pointing to the hair in the bowl. "Extremely sorry, Sir" replied the waiter and with the speed of electricity took away the bowl, taking care that no one saw the act. The offending bowl was swiftly replaced. However, my friend did not touch it. Instead, he pushed it aside with a contemptuous look. He remained tense.

Revulsion caused by the discovery of a house fly, a cockroach or any such insect is not uncommon. But how does a strand of hair evoke such a reaction? What triggers it? The sight of hair on a plate evokes different responses from different people. Some would simply dismiss it as a minor issue. Others would raise a hue and cry. The sensitive ones would get nauseated and the more sensitive might vomit right away. I have not done any research on such reactions but I feel that it is all in one's mind. A man reacts differently in different situations according to his likes and dislikes. The moment one finds hair, he thinks of its source, the head.

Did it belong to the man in the kitchen? Perhaps not because chefs working even in the low-category restaurants are supposed to wear caps and take adequate measures to guard against such a possibility. If it was not he, then was it the bareheaded waiter who carried your food from the kitchen to the table? Or did it come from somebody passing by while probing his head? Nobody could say. Perhaps, a DNA test alone might identify the culprit. Anyway, the incident reminds me of a relative who immensely loved his mother, more than his wife and siblings, in a big family. One morning while having his meal before leaving for office he found a long strand of hair in a bowl. Being long, it was likely to belong to a woman.

Not wanting to create a ruckus he quietly asked his wife about its origin. The nervous wife kept quiet. "Yours?" he asked. How would she know? So, she kept quiet. "Mother's?" The wife replied diplomatically, "Maybe."

Tasty curry

She removed the strand and the man, thinking that it belonged to his beloved mother, resumed his meal.

Seconds later, someone in the house said something that indicated that the food was being prepared by the part-time woman cook. The man heard it and developed nausea. Soon after, he emptied his stomach. How does one explain this? Evidently, it is not the hair but the person that comes to mind that causes or does not cause revulsion. The incident reminds me of another story. We were in a group holidaying in Jammu and Kashmir. A lady member was a strict vegetarian who could not stand the ‘smell/aroma' of any meat dish. At 11pm, our hungry group stormed the only open restaurant.

The place specialised in non-vegetarian dishes but when the lady asked if she could get vegetarian food, the man at the counter said ‘Yes'. We had our own doubts but there was no other option.

Food was served as desired. Our suspicion was confirmed when the lady said the food was unusually tasty. We looked at each other but kept quiet.

I noticed a piece of bone in her ‘vegetarian' dish. Distracting her attention, I quietly removed it and joined her in eulogising the tasty vegetable curry.

Months later she was told that the vegetable was dipped in mutton curry. She refused to believe it saying, "Had it been so, I would have vomited right there."

 

Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.