In a conversation at a dinner recently, the subject of discussion was which is actually the earliest civilisation? The Indus Valley civilisation, the Mesopotamian, or was it the Chinese, which many believe could be the oldest, continuous civilisation in world history.
I learnt all about Harappa and Mohenjodaro at school, but the ‘continuous’ word had me thinking. Enduring, certainly - forget 5000 BC, walk into a store in 2010 AD, and turn over a toy or a piece of furniture or look at the label of your fancy branded T’shirt – Made in China.
Anyhow, the consensus was that what each one believed to be the earliest civilisation stemmed mainly from which part of the world they came from and how historians had recorded progress there. Extending this to how we live our lives, our view is shaped to a huge extent by the environment in which we grew up and then by the environment in which we find ourselves later in life.
Food, etiquette, relationships - what one believes is ‘done’ or ‘not done’ is completely subjective and can differ widely between ten people at a dinner table, especially when you are in Oman.
Think steak tartare: when you are sitting at a café on the Champs Élysées and the waiter recommends it, it’s hardly going to be a shock to you. You may decide not to eat it but you may want to try it, even if you are not a nomad from the Central Asian steppes (as legend has it) who ate ground raw beef because they had to eat while riding with no time to stop and cook.
Would you consider eating it in a restaurant off Colaba Causeway in Bombay, though? No, you would probably think the chap was mad, if he offered it to you.
I don’t eat with chopsticks. I have no idea why, because I had seen my dad use chopsticks since I was a kid. I just can’t get comfortable with it and rather than have the succulent dim sum land on my lap, I prefer to ask for a knife and fork. Some say how can you bear to eat black pudding, while another shudders at the thought of spices in their dinner.
Some think it’s rude to serve dinner early because you are sending a message to your guests to go home early, while others look at their watch if it’s a minute past nine.
In Oman you meet them all, which I think is what makes it fun. Or should I say, interesting. At that same dinner which set me thinking about this, a visiting senior government official had said politics is a full-body contact sport. I think, on many an occasion, socialising is.
|