Be My Guest. Priya Basil

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      FOOD CAN DIVIDE AS much as connect. Even where a group is relatively homogenous, difference can suddenly sizzle, like water splashed on a hot griddle. I saw this in my father’s annoyance that our Muslim friends didn’t eat any meat dishes at our house – because they, rightly, assumed it wasn’t halal. ‘That’s it! We’re not inviting them again!’ he would rage as my mother put away excess leftovers of chicken, which the guests hadn’t touched. ‘Who do they think they are? I don’t want to see them any more. Do you hear me? Never!’ Quick to anger, my father also calmed down pretty fast. Next time we were on the way to visit Muslim friends he’d swear that he wouldn’t have any meat they served – because he knew it would be halal. By the time we were around their table, his misgivings would have disappeared and he’d tuck into whatever was on offer, extending compliments and having seconds. Years later, after my family moved briefly to London, my parents themselves sometimes bought meat from a halal butcher in Tooting. What was the alternative when certain dishes, like lamb pilau or samosas, turned out much better made with the less fatty meat, which just happened to be halal?

      There’s nothing like desire – whatever its object – to help us forget our compunctions. Food can make some of us compulsive and thus push us past certain limits – of propriety, of decency, of sanity. Whenever this happens to me, my husband says I get ‘The Look’ – a tense, hunted, frenzied expression that announces greed has taken hostage all sense. Often at pains to appear polite and decent, I have consigned manners to oblivion and chased canapé trays at parties, helping myself to handfuls at a time. Normally eager to avoid the cold at all costs, I have pulled on coat and boots and headed out into the midnight snow to buy a packet of crisps. Generally disposed to honesty, I have lied that there are no leftovers only to secretly scoff them all myself. I never understood the restraint practised by believers whose faith imposed food restrictions. How could they resist?

      If only my best friend tasted bacon, I was convinced she would be converted to pork regardless of her loyalty to Islam. One of my more ignoble childhood pranks involved disguising some ham in the food we served her and then trying not to gloat as she ate, exclaiming how delicious it was. Only after she’d finished did I reveal my ploy. Her utter mortification unsettled me. The taste had changed nothing; indeed, the fact that she’d liked it made her feel guiltier. I felt bad too, though that didn’t stop me from trying the trick again, as if I might still tempt her out of her convictions. For long afterwards, a question puzzled me: how did ideology have the power to proscribe pleasure? Then, in my thirties, I became a vegetarian and finally grasped, in my own way, how a belief could not just curb but entirely cancel out certain cravings. The impossible happened: I could pass over food I’d once adored without a pang. If belief is a choice, keeping faith is when a choice becomes habit.

      My dad may have forgotten his grudges in the face of an aromatic lamb dish, but there were deeper differences that he could not dismiss. Some distinctions, it seems, won’t be bridged, some borders won’t be crossed, no matter how many meals are shared with others, no matter how many foreign delicacies are consumed. That’s why, though some of their closest friends were Muslim, some of their dearest in-laws white, my parents warned that my sister and I should never become romantically attached to a Muslim, or a black person, or a white (in that order). Of course there was no logical explanation for this racist rule. The best my parents could manage was that it was against our religion.

      Looking back, I think we saw ourselves as victims and therefore somehow absolved from any duty to others, however much worse their plight. On our tables there was plenty, but our minds were impoverished, our imaginations limited. We prided ourselves on our hospitality, but had little sense of just how far the act could stretch – and in the stretching, who it might enable us to become.

      PERHAPS BECAUSE OF MY cravings for security and certainty, I’m no neophile when it comes to food. As a child this meant always ordering scampi and chips at the Carnivore restaurant on Sundays. Eating only the orange Smarties. Asking for my mum’s devil’s food cake on every birthday. I would even pester my friends to get their mothers to make things I liked if I was visiting: Aunty Sajida’s mince and potato koftas, Aunty Bubbles’ risotto. At the same time, I suffered from food envy: the meal of my fellow diners, or strangers’ dishes on an adjoining table, would tantalise me. It was as though I wanted something else – but not on my own plate, or of my own volition. One way around this was to try, where possible, to taste everyone else’s fare. ‘No, you can’t have a bite!’ my sister would snap, on principle, whenever my fork hovered towards her dinner.