Dinner time in high school was a moment in my day that meant taking a break from studying. I could finally put down my pencil, go eat some warm Indian food that rejuvenated me from the rough day and give my body a chance to relax. Dinner time is tied to my sense of home, especially the coziness from my parents’ home cooked food. Despite Taco Tuesday and Falafel Nights, I always connected to South Indian cooking the most. However, ever since coming to college, I have needed to shift my idea of what dinner time means to me.Â
As I walk into the Vista Grande Dining Hall, I search amongst the tables for my group of friends in order to divulge details of my day. At the sight of their faces, I feel excited to recount memories and tell stories with them. We all gather with different cuisines on our plates, different events from the day and a collective joy to be around each other. Dinner is now a place where I could meet people of all backgrounds, majors, lifestyles and indulge in our own memories. Back at home, I would immerse myself in my own culture and ethnicity, and learn stories through my mother’s native tongue. This new idea of dinner time switched my perspective of the event and its meaning to home.Â
Back at home, learning about my own culture and heritage was the highlight of dinner, because the sources of them were at my fingertips. I could learn about different Indian foods and the stories behind them. They even began to define certain parts of who my family was; my favorite tomato dish, Sambar (tomato broth with lentils), and my sister’s, Rasam (hot tomato broth with Ginger), quickly became a clear distinction between us. We learned to cook with intricate spices such as ginger, garam masala, cardamom, turmeric, and chili powder. We used vegetables such as okra, plantains, eggplant, taro root, and bottle gourd. How I expressed my culture through my food created a certain part of my identity and what dinner time meant for me.Â
In college, I struggled my first quarter to maintain this idea of what dinner time was because my roots to my Indian culture are deep and many of my cultural practices were curated during this moment of the day. However, the dining hall fostered new cultural practices like introducing me to everyone else’s cultures and allowing me to learn more about the people around me. Sitting down with a Mediterranean dish next to my friend who has an Italian dish, conversing on American economics opened my eyes to a new concept of dinner time. It isn’t just about learning my own culture, but sharing my ideas to others and learning theirs, in turn widening my own identity.Â
It is important to surround yourself with people that remind you of home, but also expand your circle to learn more about the world. Coming to Cal Poly created so many new ideas of what culture means to me. I am now blessed with numerous ideas of dinner time, thanks to my new environment around me and the one I was raised in. It reminds me that change is positive, and that as you grow up, you create new parts of your identity that shape you.Â