I was happily surprised when I found the word ‘dosa’ on a menu at
Indira, a small Indian restaurant a 15-minute drive away from my
parents’ house in Tonami.
I don’t know why, but in Japan, in general, an ‘Indian’ restaurant means
a north Indian restaurant. Their menus only have items that seem to be
of north Indian-style – like chicken curries that are heavy on the gravy
and naan.
I hardly see chappatis in Indian restaurants here. It is only of late
that south Indian restaurants have begun coming up, and most of them are
still only in Tokyo. So for south Indian food-lovers in Japan living
outside of the capital, it is somewhat of a privilege to get a taste of
south Indian food.
So how come the dosa on that menu, I wondered. It may be hard for you to
believe, but my hometown doesn’t even have a cinema, let alone an
Indian restaurant serving dosas.
To find out, I chatted with the chef, a good-looking Indian man who
speaks fluent Japanese in the dialect of my hometown. He said he was
originally from Kolkata and had worked as a chef in Chennai for more
than 10 years. He had then worked in Malaysia and had finally settled
down in Japan. He brought dosas into the menu as he saw a fellow chef
serving dosas in another restaurant and realised they were very popular.
And there it was, a simple dosa in front of me. As far as I know, Indira
is the first Indian restaurant serving south Indian food in my home
prefecture, Toyama. Is this something to do with globalisation? It
doesn’t matter. I just hope dosa will serve as a trigger and that
someday, I will get idlis or even vada, bonda, curd rice and lemon rice
in my hometown!
(Ms. Kondo, who lives in Toyama, spent some time in Chennai as a student)
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