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In December 1993, I went to
Patna, in Bihar, East India,
on a UNDP consulting assignment at the Ganges Plains Regional Centre of the National Institute of Hydrology (GPRC-NIH).
As part of the assignment, I visited the Kosi project, in Eastern Bihar and Chatra, Nepal.
I was accompanied by three engineers from the GPRC-NIH.
The trip to the Kosi river valley took our party to the town of Birpur, where we stopped for lunch.
As we settled down for lunch at a place labeled "Hotel DeLuxe",
I noticed that there were no eating utensils, so I requested them. In the meantime, my companions
proceeded to eat without the utensils.
Fifteen minutes later, I again requested the utensils, and the person in charge told me very politely that he had sent
somebody to look for them. It took another fifteen minutes for them to produce the utensils; apparently, they had
looked for them all over town.
I later realized that there are four ways of eating in this world: (1) using
a fork and knife, as in most of
the Western world, (2) with chopsticks, as in China and other Asian countries;
(3) with the help of a tortilla, as is customary in Mexico and the Arab world, and (4) with your fingers, as in many parts of India.
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