India Etiquette Lesson: Don’t eat with the hand that wipes your butt
Posted on August 6th, 2004 in GeneralComments | 14 Comments »
I’m in Bangalore, India. Today I was eating lunch with my hands, since that is how most people eat here. I like to do what the natives do, when I can. Silverware is hardly used at all. Fine with me.
So, I grab some bread with both hands and tear it apart. You use bread to scoop up food and sauces. When I do this, one of my Indian colleagues looks over and says to me, “John, when I was a young child, it took me nearly two years to learn how to tear apart bread with just one hand, and then to use the bread to eat the food. It can be tricky.”
I didn’t think it was too hard to pull apart bread with one hand, but then I tried it and realized it isn’t super easy. Then I thought about it some more and realized that my colleague was providing me with a subtle cue: Only use one hand to eat (your right hand). I looked around the table and all the people were only using their right hands to eat. Then I remembered that in this part of the world, the left hand is generally used for toiled related activities and it is considered poor etiquette to use it for eating activities.
Lesson learned. And, bravo to my colleague for deflecting the issue, while still giving me enough information to correct my behavior. If only user interfaces were so gentle, right?
14 Responses
Great, next time I’m out to lunch with my East Indian co-workers I’ll have to watch what their left hands do. I wonder if they’re true to their culture or if they’ve “assimilated” to our culture of the trusted use of toilet paper and hand soap on the “poop hand.”
John
that reminds me of a story… that long ago, knights/fighters/etc would only shake hands with their RIGHT hand, because its their sword drawing hand. thereby eliminating any chance of a cheap shot. i guess those southpaws back then, probably ruled the kingdom!
John, you should do an article on how Blog spam has changed over the years. I don’t get this “windows utitlity” or “mac fonts” stuff ever. It’s all drug-related spam for me.
Jason, I didn\’t see those two blog spam postings from March 2005. I\’ll nuke them. (Poof! Gone.)
WHAT HAPPENS IF YOUR LEFT HANDED? DOES THAT MEAN THAT YOU ARE WRITING WITH YOUR POOP HAND?
I’ve been dating an Indian girl for 8 months, and it wasn’t until we ate at an Indian restaurant just last week that she only used her right hand to eat. So I guess her culture is context sensitive.
BTW, I asked her why she only used her right hand and she had no idea. I asked her if it was so she could wipe with her left hand, and well, . . . she got mad at me.
[...] I wrote a posting about India etiquette 2-3 years ago that prompted this response: [...]
Eating with your right hand while you eat is fine and dandy if you are right handed and wipe your ass with your left hand, BUT…I am LEFT-HANDED and wipe my ass with my RIGHT hand…hypothetically, shouldn’t I eat LEFT handed then? It’s very hard for me NOT to. Also, I jerk off right handed, too…another thing you shouldn’t do with the same hand that you eat with. And no, I am NOT Indian, either.
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Well, when I was young I used to eat on my left hand till I realized that everyone else commented on me eating with my left hand…then I started to eat with my right hand… but I still write ysing my left hand… kinda messy, huh?
I guess when you are a lefty, you have to try to work on doing things on your right hand… In my case, since I play the violin, and dream to become a profesional violinist, I had to practise on my right hand… if not I would not be able to play the violin…I would lose my dream…
If you regret being a left hander and can’t switch hands I would advice you to try finding about famous left handers. You’ll be amazed!!!
hi, i know tt this article is already very old. but i was doing some research and i came across this page and comments.
i’m not an indian, i’m Malay Muslim (Asia). eating with right hand is not only for indian culture, but the middle east, asians, and alot others.
culture and traditions taught us that it is only appropriate to eat, shaking hands, and other good stuffs with your right hand as your left hand will do most of the dirty jobs.
scientifically, and also what our religion taught us, our right hand produces 18 types of enzymes and vitamins. so, that will be good for the food and also, you would only want other people to only offer their right hand to you.
left hand, it produces the other types where it is good for cleaning your ass?
Why do people think its unhygienic to use the left hand to wipe. In my trip to India I learned that its not ‘wiping’, but ‘washing’ . In fact, it seems much cleaner than using just TP without showering.
The hand I hear, is never used without water, after which the hand is washed with soap. So calling it wiping is ignorant.