In an Indian restaurant

India is not officially a vegetarian country, and many Indians eat meat whenever they can afford it. Nonetheless there is a flourishing vegetarian culture in the south. Indians have no distinctive eating implements – except their fingers. Where the Japanese like slightly glutinous sticky rice that forms balls and is easy to pick up with pointy Japanese chopsticks, Indians eat with fingers – sometimes off banana leaves in the south, and often from a thali, which is the most common way to eat in an Indian home. It is a tray, bearing a complete meal, with the food in little bowls called katori. (Foodies always order the thali in Indian restaurants, because it represents the chef’s own choice of what is freshest and best that day – there are usually veggie and non-veggie thalis available.)