parsi/parsee

[mongo_jones]

over on the u.k forum there's a discussion going on about a restaurant called the parsee. while the restaurant itself sounds very good, and i'd like to eat there when i'm next in london, i voiced some reservations about the spelling/transliteration "parsee". now i could be wrong but i've always thought that the favored spelling/transliteration in india, as used both by the community itself and those outside it, was "parsi", and that "parsee" with two e's, like "sati", spelled "suttee" or "khichdi" spelled "kedgeree" was a leftover of colonial spelling.

this would seem to be borne out by the fact that if you google the word "parsee" it returns 16,000 hits (the first being for the restaurant in question), whereas "parsi" returns 144,000. on the other hand, monica's article about parsi/parsee food seems to use the spellings interchangeably. so which is it? and am i right to wonder about the spelling "parsee" in a restaurant in england?

[balmagowry]

I don't know that I'm really qualified to answer this, things Indian not being in my area of expertise. I do know, however, that it's generally necessary and wise to allow some latitude for the difficulties of transliteration. When you're rendering the words of a foreign language for use in conjunction with your own and have to deal with the discrepancies of different alphabets and writing schemes, inconsistencies are almost bound to occur. (As a descendant of Russian immigrants to the US, I am something of an expert on the distortions to which cyrillic is prone when transliterated - I have seen spellings of my grandparents' names that are nothing short of astonishing.... ) I would be willing to bet that there isn't any single "accepted" English spelling for this word, but that usage has made one of them more common than the other. It also occurs to me that "Parsi" may be the modern form, "Parsee" more old-fashioned - as witness the fact that "ee" is the ending form that Kipling (born an Englishman, but raised with Hindi as his first language) consistently used. The instance which comes immediately to mind is that of "the Parsee Pestonjee Bomonjee... who... recited the following Sloka, which as you have not yet heard it I will now proceed to relate."

Them that takes cakes

That the Parsee-Man bakes

Makes dreadful mistakes!

[mongo_jones]

balmagowry,

while i wouldn't disagree with the broadest contours of your post i think it is important not to also lose site of the fact that particular usages/transliterations can also have particular social histories (whether those using them are aware of them or not). thus while "gandhi" and "ghandi" might both be acceptable transliterations of that particular name you're unlikely to find any indians using the latter (it has for most indians a very colonialist implication--signifying as it does a privileging of colonial (mis)pronuncitation over "native" usage ). i'm not sure if the parsi/parsee divide, if it exists, necessarily has the same kind of connotation; hence my question.

your citation of kipling is interesting in this regard since following kipling in terms of spelling etc. in the indian post/colonial context might signify something a little more than just being "old-fashioned" :-)

mongo

[balmagowry]

Yes, it had occurred to me that I might be dipping a toe into controversial waters here - probably should have pumped up the disclaimer a bit. From my limited perspective I certainly understand that the relationship between India and England is a complex one and that virtually every linguistic issue may carry cultural overtones about which I know nothing whatsoever! (For that matter, to be fair I should remark that even in the examples I cited, the family names were eventually standardized: there is now one right way to spell "Chotzinoff" or "Heifetz" and all the others are just plain WRONG. ) I guess what I'm interested in, in either case, is the process these things go through in making the transition from one language/culture to another - less the political/social nuances, perhaps, than the philological implications; which of course was the only thing I really had in mind when I made my post. OTOH - and again out of abysmal ignorance - I must confess to having felt a certain curiosity about how the Kipling citation would, er, reverberate. I do hope it wasn't actually offensive - I should be more careful about things like that.

your citation of kipling is interesting in this regard since following kipling in terms of spelling etc. in the indian post/colonial context might signify something a little more than just being "old-fashioned" :-)

But doesn't that indeed depend on context - where the spelling appears, and who uses it? Uh-oh, yes I see that this question too must be simply fraught with potential pitfalls. But it does seem to me that a great deal depends, in this particular instance, on exactly where the restaurant is, who runs it, who named it, who patronizes it, what it serves and how... and so on. And I suppose the intent, if any, behind the choice of usage - that of course is often very difficult to fathom; especially since so many people are simply oblivious to such subtleties and may just be inexact spellers.

[mongo_jones]

I must confess to having felt a certain curiosity about how the Kipling citation would, er, reverberate. I do hope it wasn't actually offensive - I should be more careful about things like that.

i didn't mean to suggest that mentioning kipling is automatically offensive. there is much to like about kipling's fiction--though these issues can carry some freight. as someone mentioned on a different literary list i'm on, indian readers sometimes realize with a shock that the people he's exoticizing are "us"; on the other hand there are enough indians who have much happier relations with raj nostalgia than others--some of these are the indian pukka-sahibs who are a subset of those who can be seen on delhi evenings in the gymkhana club lounge or indeed in the bars/restaurants of the hotels imperial and claridge's.

But doesn't that indeed depend on context - where the spelling appears, and who uses it? Uh-oh, yes I see that this question too must be simply fraught with potential pitfalls. But it does seem to me that a great deal depends, in this particular instance, on exactly where the restaurant is, who runs it, who named it, who patronizes it, what it serves and how... and so on. And I suppose the intent, if any, behind the choice of usage - that of course is often very difficult to fathom; especially since so many people are simply oblivious to such subtleties and may just be inexact spellers.

at this point i'm less interested in plumbing that particular restaurant owner's motives (a pointless exercise, that would be) than in trying to figure out if the parsi/parsee divide in fact has clear separated meanings for anyone. if not, my original disquiet would be moot. in this case location may also have a lot to do with--"parsi" may be the common usage in india but not a standard spelling for branches of that community in other places.

in some senses, in issues like this it is not a question of the motive of the speaker (or writer) but that of the resonances it has for the hearer or reader. for example, a lot of very progressive people, including, i just noticed, a brilliantly subtle colleague of mine, use the "ghandi" spelling not because they have anything in common with smuts or churchill but because they just don't know how it resonates for a particular body of readers who they might otherwise seek to find common ground with. on the other hand, not all words or phrases carry equal amounts of baggage among different groups of people. if "parsee" does in fact signify a recognition to an english clientele that "parsi" might not it would still be playing with a kind of benevolent nostalgia (rather than re-orienting it) but it wouldn't be as offensive as, say, pronouncing or writing "negro" as "nigra". at some point, however, ignorance becomes an insufficient explanation/excuse--hindu and hindoo sound the same too, and are both adequate transliterations but using the second one doesn't just make you old-fashioned--it locates you in a particular old fashion, whether you want to be in it or not.

of course, we can ask if restaurant owners or food-writers need in fact worry about challenging/re-orienting larger cultural frameworks. however, i'd suggest most "ethnic" restaurants--i'll speak here about the u.s context, which i am more familiar with than the u.k)--already play in those waters: everytime an indian restaurant here names itself some variation of "taj mahal" or "mughal", or a middle-eastern restaurant names itself some variation on "magic carpet" or "alladin" they are already invoking this kind of symbolic traffic; the very fact that they seek to profit from it suggests the power simple names (which may in other contexts be completely innocent) may have.

again, none of this may apply finally to the parsee restaurant in highgate if the spellings "parsee" and "parsi" don't in fact carry the baggage that i, associatively, thought they might. the larger question though, i think, remains an interesting one regardless of what the findings may be in this particular case.

[Pan]

Just as a tangent, Malaysians of all ethnicities generally use the "Ghandi" spelling, and I always thought it was simply a local misspelling and was unaware of its history. They also confusingly refer to the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. as "Martin Luther" and sometimes get indignant when I explain that I expect a reference to the Protestant leader when I see that name.

But getting back to the topic, it seems to me like the best solution is for you to have a meal at the restaurant - since you'd like to, anyway - and ask them their reasons for their choice of spelling while you're there.

[bhelpuri]

There isn't anything new, novel or innovative in a London Indian restaurant seeking to evoke Raj-era atmosphere. In this case, Parsee, it's partly achieved using an unused and archaic spelling instead of "Parsi'.

The last decade in London has seen many Indian restaurants in the luxury category, with splashy launches and celebrity chefs and clientele, and all of the accompanying hoopla.

But before that, there were only two Indian restaurants which slotted themselves in that general category -The Bombay Brasserie and Chutney Mary - and both heavily leaned on the same theme, nostalgic menus wrapped up with the promise of 'burrah sahib' treatment. If you ask me, the latter's name could be interpreted as far more provocative and offensive than the restaurant in question.

--

This use of the word 'Parsee' seems to me to be harmless, it's like writing Nagpur as Nagpore to rustle up an idea of time and place. It's quite a step away from (as Mongo points out) writing 'Hindoo' for Hindu, even if Parsis themselves don't use it any more.

Actually, the odd thing is that Parsis outside India pretty much don't call themselves Parsis or at least that is not how they present themselves to the world. No, they become (again) Zoroastrians and every community organization points to that religious identification rather than any context which would imply the several-thousand-year Indian connection. That's a bit irritating, (again, only if you ask me) because the lengthy history in India is played down and the truly ancient Persian roots are implicitly played up in this lexical choice.

[mongo_jones]

pan:

But getting back to the topic, it seems to me like the best solution is for you to have a meal at the restaurant - since you'd like to, anyway - and ask them their reasons for their choice of spelling while you're there.

bhelpuri:

There isn't anything new, novel or innovative in a London Indian restaurant seeking to evoke Raj-era atmosphere. In this case, Parsee, it's partly achieved using an unused and archaic spelling instead of "Parsi'.

--

This use of the word 'Parsee' seems to me to be harmless, it's like writing Nagpur as Nagpore to rustle up an idea of time and place. It's quite a step away from (as Mongo points out) writing 'Hindoo' for Hindu, even if Parsis themselves don't use it any more.

to respond to pan first: while i would like to eat at the restaurant when i'm next in london the point i was trying to make is partially that this restaurant's particular reasons for their choice of spelling isn't all there is to it. i think we can talk about this even before getting their answer. in the meantime i'd point out that plenty of good people participate in exoticizing themselves or their cultures of origin (howsoever lightly or heavily) for complex reasons. and as for the prevalence of the "ghandi" spelling among malays, that may well be just a local misspelling unconnected to neo/colonial narratives elsewhere, or it might be evidence of the continuing power and reach of those narratives.

bhelpuri: i take it then that as far as you know "parsee" is an archaic spelling, and that you agree too that it is probably being used to evoke the raj in some way? i'll wait to hear more takes on this from other people. and i'll pop the question to "experts" in other fora as well. in the meantime i'll say that i'm not offended or provoked by the restaurant the parsee calling itself that--i'm just wondering what's at work in that choice of spelling. is it a non-coded, non-loaded choice? if not, how might it be coded or loaded to different people?

in any event i'm sure the semiotics of indian restaurant name-selection in the u.k must be quite different from that in the u.s (both because of the history of colonialism and because of the different proportions of south-asian immigrants). this would be an interesting topic in its own right: what patterns emerge in how indian restaurants in india and elsewhere name themselves.

as for the general nomenclature question, i don't think zoroastrian always =parsi; whether people are known as (or call themselves) zoroastrians, parsis or iranis has to do i think with when and where they arrived. but you're probably referring to indian parsis who immigrate and then stop calling themselves parsis? that might be, though this is entirely speculation, because the word "parsi" denotes person from persia--a marker of ethnic separation from the people they arrived among. like irani for later arrivals; i'm told this distinction between "parsi" and "irani" is important to many parsis in bombay, even if the larger population thinks they're all the same. once they're no longer in india or among indians the context for calling themselves parsis may no longer exist. but again this is speculation.

to stay on topic i wonder if the more newly migrated parsis who prefer the marker "zoroastrian" also call their food zoroastrian food? that would be strange indeed and a greater denial of 1000 years plus of indian history!

i wonder if someone has done an analysis at length of the boom in "indian-ness" in fashionable quarters of english culture in the last 10-15 years. would be interesting to read how this gets sliced across different layers of the english-south asian experience.

[Pan]

to respond to pan first: while i would like to eat at the restaurant when i'm next in london the point i was trying to make is partially that this restaurant's particular reasons for their choice of spelling isn't all there is to it. i think we can talk about this even before getting their answer. in the meantime i'd point out that plenty of good people participate in exoticizing themselves or their cultures of origin (howsoever lightly or heavily) for complex reasons. and as for the prevalence of the "ghandi" spelling among malays, that may well be just a local misspelling unconnected to neo/colonial narratives elsewhere, or it might be evidence of the continuing power and reach of those narratives.

My guess, now that you've told me something about the history of that spelling, is that it's a legacy of British rule in Malaya and North Borneo.

Your point about the meaning of the spelling to people other than the restaurant owners is well taken.

For my part, I wouldn't have thought twice about "Parsee" vs. "Parsi" but would find "Hindoostan" or some such a very odd spelling for a restaurant today. I would hope but not expect that a restaurant calling itself "Mughlai" would actually present Mughlai cuisine. And I'm always suspicious of a restaurant that advertises that it serves "Exotic Asian Cuisine" or some such.

[bhelpuri]

as far as you know "parsee" is an archaic spelling, and that you agree too that it is probably being used to evoke the raj in some way

There's no doubt about it.

is it a non-coded, non-loaded choice? if not, how might it be coded or loaded to different people?

I think the only code here is Raj-nostalgia, it's exactly like calling a restaurant 'The Gymkhana' or 'Bengal Lancer' .

as for the general nomenclature question, i don't think zoroastrian always =parsi; whether people are known as (or call themselves) zoroastrians, parsis or iranis has to do i think with when and where they arrived. but you're probably referring to indian parsis who immigrate and then stop calling themselves parsis? that might be, though this is entirely speculation, because the word "parsi" denotes person from persia--a marker of ethnic separation from the people they arrived among. like irani for later arrivals; i'm told this distinction between "parsi" and "irani" is important to many parsis in bombay, even if the larger population thinks they're all the same. once they're no longer in india or among indians the context for calling themselves parsis may no longer exist. but again this is speculation

You're quite right that the Zoroastrians in India strenuously divide themselves into the ranks of Parsis and Iranis, and in fact (since this is a food site) the food of the two sub-communities does have its differences. It's also true that 'Pars' and 'Parsi' are somewhat loaded words without taking into account the Indian Zoroastrian context - they are interchangeable (and often audibly indistinguishable) to Fars/Farsi.

But what I'm referring to is a linguistically unsubtle reclamation of Zoroastrian Persian-ness (to the cost of Indian-ness) that has historically taken place in the Parsi communities overseas. You can't really blame anyone - and you ask a valid question at the end of your post - but this tends to be a case where the very very ancient roots are the main signifier and the 1000 odd years of "being Indian" are portrayed externally as a minor complication. There are some similarities here (with fewer national/identity implications, of course) to the older Jewish communities of India, which as you no doubt know moved almost entirely en masse to Israel in the 50's and pretty completely subsumed their many-centuries-old Indian-ness to a perceived common Jewish/Israeli identity. But (as you start to probe in that last question) there is a bit of a swing back in the other direction now - at least from what I am hearing.

----

Balmagowry,

Love that quote, I wonder why Kipling was being so mean to the poor Pars(ee) bakers.

There is also a Pars(ee) in Moby Dick, a sinister mystic with the unlikely Islamic name of Fedallah. Again the poor non-Indian-Zoroastrian (?) gets an undeserved bad rap.

[mongo_jones]

Balmagowry,

Love that quote, I wonder why Kipling was being so mean to the poor Pars(ee) bakers.

There is also a Pars(ee) in Moby Dick, a sinister mystic with the unlikely Islamic name of Fedallah. Again the poor non-Indian-Zoroastrian (?) gets an undeserved bad rap.

we may now be ranging a little too far afield from food (hey, there's bakers and cakes in the quote!) but it wouldn't surprise me if for someone like kipling the figure of the parsi/ee evoked a particular kind of response. parsis were the most westernized of all indians in the late 19th century and anyone who's read a lot of kipling knows how he felt about westernized indians. no idea what was going on with melville though.

my mother worked with a lot of parsis in our days in hyderabad/secunderabad. i regret now my teenage rebelliousness that prevented me from accompanying my parents to more meals at their friends' homes than i did.

[balmagowry]

Love that quote, I wonder why Kipling was being so mean to the poor Pars(ee) bakers.

There is also a Pars(ee) in Moby Dick, a sinister mystic with the unlikely Islamic name of Fedallah. Again the poor non-Indian-Zoroastrian (?) gets an undeserved bad rap.

we may now be ranging a little too far afield from food (hey, there's bakers and cakes in the quote!) but it wouldn't surprise me if for someone like kipling the figure of the parsi/ee evoked a particular kind of response. parsis were the most westernized of all indians in the late 19th century and anyone who's read a lot of kipling knows how he felt about westernized indians.

Yow - hold the phone here! I can answer that. Part of the reason I felt safe with that particular quote is that it's from one of Kipling's non-Indian works, the Just-So Stories. The Parsee-Man, ironically, is the only remotely Eastern character in all the stories, and he is there for whimsical and rhyming reasons only. Kipling is not being hard on him - on the contrary, he's the good guy, the innocent victim who then pulls off a highly satisfying revenge on the bullying Rhinoceros who has stolen his beautiful big cake, his Superior Comestible which was all done brown and smelt most sentimental, out of sheer nastiness and stupidity.

(The Rhinoceros was named Strorks, but I think only his Mummy was allowed to call him that.)

EDIT to add: just remembered that the Parsee wore a hat from which the rays of the sun were reflected in more-than-oriental-splendour. And nothing else, I think, which is all right because he lived on an (otherwise) uninhabited island in the Red Sea.

Edited April 4, 2004 by balmagowry (log)

[mongo_jones]

that's what i get for talking about things i haven't read.

[balmagowry]

that's what i get for talking about things i haven't read.

Read, then, and enjoy. It's wonderful charming stuff; Kipling at his most innocent (well... except for a few wry twists here and there) and his funniest. At play with language and at peace with creation.

[Vikram]

Coming to this interesting discussion a bit late, I'm not sure which points to reply to first.

At random, on Iranis vs. Parsis, there is definitely a difference. Parsis refers to Zoroastrians who came to Indian centuries ago and who have deep roots in Indian culture. Iranis were immigrants to India from Iran/Persia who came in the late 19th/early 20th century attracted by the textile lead boom of the Bombay region. Many of the Indian industrialists were Parsis who gave employment to the Iranis, often as their personal servants. Many of these Iranis were poor Zoroastrians so presumably the Parsis saw this as doing something for their historical community. As a point of fact though, there were Muslim Iranis too who came, so its not accurate to say that Iranis = Zoroastrians.

And as bhelpuri notes Irani food is not quite the same as Parsi food. Its similar obviously, since it has some of the same roots, and working as cooks for the Parsis, the Iranis style of food came even closer to theirs. But they did use Persian ingredients the Parsis had given up or forgotten - the small sour berries called zaresth, for example (barberries, I think they are called). There's a wonderful Irani restaurant called Britannia not far from my office that makes the most sublime chicken berry pulao.

At one time at least, Irani food would have been more widely available than Parsi food in Bombay because they controlled much of the restaurant business. It was common for Iranis, after working for years with the Parsis, to take their savings and open restaurants where their food was available. These restaurants were also bakeries so Iranis ran the bread and cake business in Bombay (to a lesser extent, along with the Catholic Goans) so its quite possible that Kipling's Parsee baker was actually an Irani!

These Irani restaurants were particularly popular because they were seen as neutral places where Hindus, Muslims and Christians could all eat (I realise this meant that the existence of Muslim Iranis was tacitly overlooked) though at one time they kept three types of crockery - pink for the Hindus, green for Muslims and flowery for Christians and every one else. It used to be the boast of Irani restaurant waiters that they could tell what crockery to give you without asking you! Sadly most of these restaurants are closed or on their last legs now, but that's another story.

I've also noticed the tendency of Parsis abroad to start referring to themselves as Zoroastrians, or to come together in Zoroastrian organisations. There might be many reasons for this. Such organisations could include non-Parsi Zoroastrians, and there are also many of people of Parsi origin, but who have not lived in India for three or more generations, so their links with Indian Parsis are weak. They might find it easier explaining themselves to others as Zoroastrians are, without getting into the complexities of Parsi history and culture. And over the generations in their new countries many of the characteristic parts of Parsi culture like Parsi Gujarati dialect or the cooking are likely to fall into disuse so the religion might seem the more logical thing to focus on.

I think though - and I'm saying this not as a Parsi myself, but one who's lived with them most of my life, often been mistaken for one (my surname sounds like a Parsi one) and would count myself a close and affectionate observer of Parsi culture - there is a strain of religious revivalism or dogmatism that has grown in the community that tends to focus on the religion to the exclusion of Parsi history. Allied to this is the tendency of many Parsis to project themselves as "Western" as opposed to Indian and in doing so to make much of the Persian part of their history and less of the Indian part. (On a practical note, there are more historical records of the Persian than of the Indian period).

This came up last week in an interview I did with Dr.Katy Dalal whose new cookbook Jamva Chaloji-2 I have lauded in another thread. As an archaeologist and historian by training no one is better placed than Dr.Dalal to go on about the Persian culture of the Parsis, but she very firmly focused on the Indian side. Much of her research has been about the remnants of Parsi history in India, and the book is also an attempt to preserve this by bringing back the life and the recipes of Parsis in the villages of Gujarat. During my interview she bemoaned the fact that Parsis had become too Westernised and said that her book was an attempt to correct this.

And here, and finally coming to the subject of this thread, could be a justification for spelling the restaurant's name as Parsee. An important part of Dr.Dalal's attempt to focus on the Indian part of the Parsi experience is the way she always refers to the recipes by their Parsi Gujarati names. And many of these do seem to me to preserve an older style of spelling - bhunjela sookka boomla for dry roasted dried bombay ducks, for example. Today we'd be more likely to spell that sookka as sukha (or sukhe, for the Maharashtrian style). That colonial double O crops up again in words like istoo (stew, and yes, I know this is a Malayali usage as well) or mitthoo (sweet). Its true that Dr.Dalal uses Parsi rather than Parsee, but I can see a case being made for the latter as the dialect term rather than colonial usage.

(Unrelated question: if modern Indian orthography has replaced double Os with single Us, then should we be referring to sappotas as chikus rather than chikoos?)

I did want to take up Mongo's point about the naming of Indian restaurants, but will have to do that in another mail (or perhaps its worth a separate topic). The only other thing I want to say is that if balmagowry is looking for Indian champions of Kipling, count me in! Any problems about his politics, which to a large extent were of his time, are to me quite overruled by his sheer literary genius and his love and knowledge of India. I put Kim on any must-read list of books on India, archaic or colonial visions be damned!

Vikram

[bhelpuri]

new cookbook Jamva Chaloji-2

Vikram,

1) I've a relative coming out here from Bombay a couple of weeks from now. Where can I get her to pick up both of these Dalal cookbooks? She lives in "thee suburbs", is the best bet to call Danai or Lotus and order them?

Also, since cookbooks have been raised, are there any other must-have food books that you can recommend from the Bombay bookshops right now? I have a bunch of the Penguins (including the Parsi one) and several others, but if you could rustle up a top-5/top-10 I'd be most grateful.

2) I'm also a fan of Kipling, and particularly the near-peerless 'Kim'. Actually, I'm very interested in all the accounts of the 'Great Game' (which includes that book). I wonder if you have read Hopkirk's 'Quest for Kim'. The author - whose several fine books on the 'Great Game' are also recommended - does a wonderful job of tracking the real-life events (and characters) that went into Kipling's books. If you haven't, I highly recommend it.

[mongo_jones]

And here, and finally coming to the subject of this thread, could be a justification for spelling the restaurant's name as Parsee. An important part of Dr.Dalal's attempt to focus on the Indian part of the Parsi experience is the way she always refers to the recipes by their Parsi Gujarati names. And many of these do seem to me to preserve an older style of spelling - bhunjela sookka boomla for dry roasted dried bombay ducks, for example. Today we'd be more likely to spell that sookka as sukha (or sukhe, for the Maharashtrian style). That colonial double O crops up again in words like istoo (stew, and yes, I know this is a Malayali usage as well) or mitthoo (sweet). Its true that Dr.Dalal uses Parsi rather than Parsee, but I can see a case being made for the latter as the dialect term rather than colonial usage.

it is possible then that more than one narrative is meeting in the name of this restaurant.

(Unrelated question: if modern Indian orthography has replaced double Os with single Us, then should we be referring to sappotas as chikus rather than chikoos?)

vikram,

i think the issue--at least as relates to the narratives of colonialism or raj nostalgia--is not one of everything that has that "oo" sound or that "ee" sound being now properly spelled with an "u" or "i" but that of a subset of these words that have more of these associations than others. as for chikus/chikoos i wasn't even aware that there was a standardized "english" spelling; i don't know that i've ever used a consistent spelling for them.

thanks to all those who responded to this thread (on both fora). if nothing else i now have a clearer idea of everything that might be involved here and am less "suspicious" (bad word) of what's going on in the name of this restaurant.

[bhelpuri]

As for the chicku/oo, I find it hard to get past the evidence (offered by Octavio Paz, and others) that this is part of a direct loanword from the original Nahuatl!

In the Yucatan, in that indigenous language, the fruit is called 'chicozapota'. In general Hindi usage it is the first half of the word used, in Malayali it is the second. Direct transference! The oo/u business is vastly secondary.

[Episure]

As for the chicku/oo, I find it hard to get past the evidence (offered by Octavio Paz, and others) that this is part of a direct loanword from the original Nahuatl!

In the Yucatan, in that indigenous language, the fruit is called 'chicozapota'. In general Hindi usage it is the first half of the word used, in Malayali it is the second. Direct transference! The oo/u business is vastly secondary.

There is an old thread in the Mexico section which referred to similarities between the two cuisines and the chickoo

[bhelpuri]

here is an old thread in the Mexico section which referred to similarities between the two cuisines and the chickoo

Enjoyable thread, Episure, thank you. I wish I'd run into it (and this site) back in September when the topic was raised. This stuff (roughly "food history") is like, well, like laddoos to a small hungry child to me.

I'll have lots to add about the Turkey, the Mexican-Indian connection including la China Poblana, and even about the possible evidence for a pre-Columbian trans-Pacific traffic.

All at the appropriate time, of course.

But I wonder if any of the remarkably avid food/culture people here are familiar with the small but heated flap that is raging since photos of this twelfth-century temple carving were unveiled?

The question is - is that maize in the carving's hand? If it is, obviously we need to completely rethink our accounts of global dispersals of various New World/Old World foods. We're not there yet, and the evidence points to this not being maize, but the questions raised haven't been answered satisfactorily yet.

[tryska]

it's either maize or some sort of thousand petaled lotus. it could even be a hyacinth.

mongo - i'm confused as to why you are taking umbrage i guess, to this particular restaurants spelling?

[Episure]

mongo - i'm confused as to why you are taking umbrage i guess, to this particular restaurants spelling?

To parse or not to parse.

If you think mongo_jones is taking umbrage you should see my Parsi friends getting worked up when their names are not spelled or pronounced right. Parsis can be very cantankerous and have raw nerves in the most unlikiliest of place.

Some weird Parsi names to ponder about:

Sodawaterbottleopenerwalla

Doctor Workingboxwalla

Readymoney

Freddy Mercury ( Queen). Okay maybe this is not strange for you all but he was born Farrokh Bulsara

and there is someone who shares Vikram's second name- Doctor Doctor.

I dont much care whether Cyrus Todiwalla/Toddywalla/Todiwallah/Toddywallah/Todywalla/Todywallah/Todiwala....(get the point?) chooses to call it The Parsee, but I am going to some 'tuddun' bhonu on saturday.

[tryska]

Huh. I never knew freddie/freddi/freddee/fredi was parsi/parsee. for some reason i thought maybe he was anglo. in any case i've just found another reason to be proud i'm indian. i can't wait to tell my mom. i bet she didn't know. and to think, all i thought we had in the crossover section was Englebert Humperdink.

[Episure]

Norah Jones father = Ravi Shankar

[tryska]

!

one learns something new everyday.