Eating in Public again (kind of): Vindaloo Against Violence

It's hard not to get the sense that the problems of street violence and racism in my beautiful city are somewhat intractable. Yet it was also hard not to be swept up in the popular movement of eating Indian food today to demonstrate solidarity with Indians resident or visiting or studying here. Indian restaurants have been booked out for the day, and there's a big facebook group, apparently. I was going to suggest we ordered Indian take-away tonight, but when P came home he went straight into the kitchen and started preparing a delicious eggplant curry. It's not just about celebrating multiculturalism in the way we now eat globally, but the idea of commensality — sitting and eating together — with a common purpose.

So I'm going on record to say I abhor violence altogether: whether it's racially motivated, the opportunistic copy-cat drawing of a knife, the murder of a little girl, a classmate in the schoolground (two recent examples from Queensland), or ... I don't know ...  the everyday and everynight violence against women, too. If cooking and eating together can slow down even a little such violence, I don't care how daggy or idealistic it seems: pass me another poppadum.