Who will pick up the plates?
You will take money for food!!
When we were planning to launch ForkTales, my wife’s family was super cool. My family had questions of the above kind. Yesterday, I met a friend whose wife cooks well and wants to do something on her own. He is ready to put her into a chef training course but not do pop-ups at home.
The questions come from the caste and class system that most of us so vehemently deny exists. There is no term in English for jutha, the plate that someone has eaten in is impure. It is for the lower castes to pick up jutha plates. It shocks a few that we pick up plates. Why do we?
You can invite a hundred people home to eat and pamper them as hell. But when you take money for it, it becomes transactional and puts you on a lower rung than the one being served. It has both class and caste connotations.
When i was young, there were a lot of customs that I never understood. The wife of your younger brother can’t pick your jutha plates. I am sure it was meant to prohibit interaction and thus, incest.
I can write a whole series on soiled dishes. But that’s for another time. For now, I have reason to convince others to do pop-ups at home.
