One of the things I most looked forward to every day in India was lunch, and not simply because I love to eat. It was a meal that routinely and quietly reaffirmed that I was a member of the family. Sometimes we'd go out for lunch - and quite often Raj and I would be driving downtown to meet with businesses to set up internship opportunities for students or visiting local high schools to promote our Champlain College campus - but usually we'd just have lunch in John's office. I'd first walk across the street to the little shop (which was a shop only in the most technical use of the term - it was about five feet by five feet - and the owner sat on a stool behind the counter) to grab a Sprite - he was always very happy to see me. Back in John's office we'd spread out newspapers on his desk, and the local canteen on campus would send along food. The guy who ran the canteen was also the local neighborhood snake wrangler (so if someone found a cobra under their house they'd call him and he'd remove it) - he invited me to go with him to the annual snake festival at Pune (east of Mumbai), but, sadly, I had to fly out right before the event so I missed it. Don't make too much of the snake wrangler connection - the food was almost universally vegetarian, and as a Hindu he would avoid doing any harm to the snake. The lunch would usually consist of a few dishes which we ate with either rice or bread. The one constant was dhal (also spelled dahl and daal and dal), which is lentil-based and a staple of the Indian diet. My Indian friends would roll their eyes when the dhal showed up again, which meant that I got to eat almost all of it every day. I ate so many fantastic meals in India, but I may remember those everyday lunches in John's office most fondly.
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