Prague diary 3: A tryst with Masala Dosa and the amazing nationalism that food can inspire

Travelling to a foreign country is always fun. My visit to Prague in mid-July was no different. But on the very second day of my week-long stay in the beautiful central European city, I began to feel a pinch and it was about the food. Though I am no vegetarian and neither have any religious reservation on diet, repeated doses of pork and hotdogs started making me uneasy.

But some 7,000 kilometres away from home, where do I get homely food? I had not made any homework on availability of Indian food in Prague and nor was I having a steady Internet connection to search for an Indian eatery in the Czech capital.

It was just then when a Malayalee saved me. Yes, like a messiah, Mr Jacob, came up to me on the second afternoon of my trip when I was desperately looking for an Indian dinner or something close to it at the Wenceslas Square, the heart of the city.

"Are you looking for Indian food?" the man asked just when the tired I was preparing to return to the hotdogs.

I looked at the man, aged around mid-40s with a darker complexion, easy to identify as a South Asian. "Yes, I said," in a tone of surrender as if I was preparing for the last supper.

"Come with me," the saviour showed me the way. It was just a few minutes walk from where we met. We entered a Van Graaf store and just behind it, there stands Signature, an Indian restaurant. A Masala Dosa was an easy offer (priced 150 Czech Koruna or 433 INR; quite a price isn't it but yet, it's a food from home).

While relishing the dosa, a question struck me. In India, I will not call it a home food for it is not the diet in the region from where I originate, i.e., eastern India. I still remember vividly that when I had gone to South India for my first job, the repeated intakes of dosa and rasam and sambar had left me disheartened. In India, the food of the southerners is not something people from the north, east or west relish. The coconut chutney or vadas fried in coconut oil is not very tongue-friendly for the non-southerners. But in Prague, my identity as an Indian had transcended the local barriers and an innocuous masala dosa was dearer to me than a hotdog for it was 'Indian'. How nationalism manifests itself even in our food habits. Remarkable, isn't it?

Coming back to my saviour Mr Jacob, I made it a point to have my dinner at the restaurant he had led me to for the remaining period of my stay in Prague. I had foolkas and gobi (cauliflower) curries and even vegetable biriyani at the Signature, retaining the India link in some form.

For most of my colleagues at the journalists' workshop that I had attended in Prague, food was not a big issue may be because they were still located close to their home in the continental sense but for me, the divide was a bit too much to bridge.

But then, there was Mr Jacob to take care of me. Long live India.