Back in the 17th century or so, some British merchants decided that they were tired of eating nothing but the same old fish and chips and moldy bread pudding. So they set out in their ships, in search of better-tasting food, and in addition, better-looking women. They sailed east to India, and found, on both accounts, what they were looking for. Not only that, but they discovered a tasty beverage called tea which, in terms of popularity and utility, far surpassed the cholera-infested river water that had heretofore been the national beverage. They kept staying and drinking up all the tea and eating all the pakoras, like rude houseguests, until Gandhi, an upstanding young law student, politely sent the intruders on their merry way. Oh, and a bunch of other stuff happened in the interim that I don’t know much about, because my high school world history class stopped just before the beheading of Louis XVI. I would find about that business much later.

Anyway, the colonization of India is often seen as the hallmark of the British Colonial Empire, mainly because it enabled the flow of tasty foods into a country distinguished by its profound dearth of flavor. The Indians themselves were generally none too happy about the situation, especially Indian men, who got tired of the British merchants swooping in and stealing their wives and daughters - and so there was a bit of resistance here and there. As it turns out though, the best resistance that Indians could have offered was through the food, the very prize itself that the British were after in the first place. The food that, to this day, destroys countless hours of work and productivity of the descendants of colonizers. The food that keeps us coming back for more.

How would the Indian resisters of 1857 known such a thing? That chopping up women and throwing them into wells was in fact unnecessary and a bit superfluous? That all they had to do was set up a giant restaurant, with extended buffet hours, and lace their traditional dishes with cream and butter and tryptophan? That the British soldiers would come in droves and stuff themselves into oblivion? That the soldiers would afterwards be utterly useless in conflict or other colonizing activities? That then the Indians could just chuck them into a well if they liked, or send them back to whence they came from on boats (that is, if the post-buffet weight of the soldiers wasn’t enough to sink them)?

As I type this, even though I am nowhere near being hungry still, and will not be for another twelve hours (after eating lunch at 12:30), my mouth is watering for more chicken tikki masala. Mmm, sweet heavenly colonial revenge.