Curry Rant

I can't eat curry. Any curry. I realize that the recipe varies from country to country, from chef to chef, from family to family, etc. But come on, people. It's still called "curry," so there has to be something they all have in common!

I used to eat curry. Not regularly, but from time to time I would do something adventurous and try a new restaurant. I will try anything once. But after about the third or fourth time I turned a horrible shade of green and vomited for 6 hours straight within an hour of eating said curry, those old cause-effect cognitive cells kicked in. Aha! It makes me sick. I shall avoid it.

Here is where it gets weird. People actively attempt to talk me into eating curry when I say I don't want it. Even if I tell them I'm allergic (technically I think it's an intolerance, but I don't really care what it's called--it makes me violently ill), they still try to get me to try it. "It must be one of the spices," they say. "You should break it down into the most common spices and see which one of them is making you sick."

I don't know about you, but I don't often recommend to others that they deliberately eat things that will make them vomit. Call me old-fashioned, but it just seems rude. My solution is much easier, and it avoids the nasty side-effect of me spending the evening puking and feeling utterly miserable. I just don't eat curry.

And yet. And yet. People won't let this go. I don't get it. My inability to eat this largely Indian food is akin to stating that I hate kittens. I become a strange sort of anathema to those around me, a kind of anti-cool talisman that even the moderately hip seem bent on destroying. The most brazen was an old "boyfriend" (didn't last long for what will soon become obvious reasons) who took me for breakfast at a place that had "the best potatoes ever." We ordered them, and a plate full of potatoes covered in curry powder arrives on the table. He sat forward , excited as a two-year-old at clown camp as he speared a couple and held them out to me. I tried not to gag on the smell (because believe me when you have tasted something twice often enough, it is no longer pleasant to even be in the same room with it), and pulled my head back. The conversation went a little something like this:

"It has curry," I said, making sure I stated the obvious.

"Uh-huh. Here, try it!" He profered the toxic concoction once again.

"I can't eat curry; I'm allergic."

He looked at me, confused, then offered it again. "But it's really good! You've never had potatoes so good!"

"I can't. Really. I'm allergic. It will make me sick."

He put the fork down and looked at me with disgust and contempt. "You mean I brought you all the way here just for this, and you won't even try it?" At least he'd put the damned fork down by now.

"I can't. It has curry. Curry makes me very, very sick. I am allergic to it. Why don't I just get something else? What else here is good?"

He slams the fork back into the potatoes, shoveling them into his own mouth (preferable to my own, but there will be no kisses later for many reasons). "I don't know. I always come here for the potatoes, and you won't even try them."

"Look, what part of 'I can't eat them because they will make me sick,' are you not getting? Do you understand the concept of allergies?"

"All I know is that I brought you all the way down here and you won't even try the one thing I asked you to."


It went on like this for a while. And if he were the only one, I'd think he was just a freak and move on. But I have people ask me things like, "How will you be able to travel in India if you won't eat curry?" Gee, let me think: I won't go to India. I mean, look, I do love to travel, and I have been to many places in the world. And I plan to go to many more. But it's a HUGE world, people! I can just skip India. (Australia is also off the list, as it is entirely infested with spiders the size of dinner plates. But that is a story for another time.)

And so I continue in my life, living with this affliction. No, I am not able to eat at most Indian restaurants because of the smell (although if the Tandoori chicken is good enough...). I have to settle with Mexican, Japanese, Chinese, Irish, Cambodian, French, Italian, Spanish, Cajun, Mediterranean, Middle Eastern, and the odd diner, just to name a few. I must also live with travels to the hundreds of other countries in the world.

The saddest part is watching my friends and family deal with my affliction. It is truly they who suffer, forced away from tasty curry-laden nibblies found even at innocuous pizza places. For the most part it's not discussed after the initial discovery, as my anti-cool factor forces them into the shadows. Things could be worse, though. I could insist we eat at Dennys.