Morais
But after the business deals and the high level brokering in globalized English, we flee the bland mastery of our acquired cultures and return to who we remember ourselves to be: in the tea leaves, the tamarind soup, the rice and curries, and the cloying sweetmeats to be found in unlovely cafes on low-end streets. Kitchen Aid can do what the seemingly endless succession of house maids used to do with rhythmic ease: pulverize chilies to a fiery paste on a grinding stone or pound rice to a powdery fineness with each throw of a mighty wooden pestle into a floor-standing mortar. But in the metropolitan centers of the world, where the masters of the universe reside and to which we have lately come, we are hard-pressed to find exactly the right ingredients for the many-splendored confections of our youth. Even harder is it to summon the will or inclination to re-create those remembered pleasures, to parade our little patriot acts. But we do not hesitate, in alien company, to wax lyrical about the foods we miss and remember. Perhaps we even overstate how much we miss and what exactly we remember. In so doing, we define our difference, paying homage to the countries that gave us our history, the nests where we were nurtured, and the cultures into which we have slipped and found our place.
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FUGUE #28