I recently found a desi grocery store. It's insanely close to my house, carries meat as well, and it's been making me re-think about hating to shop at desi stores. The first time I went in there, I was looking for mash ki daal, but the only thing I could find that looked like it (it's a small, white lentil) was labeled Urad, not Mash. I didn't think they were the same thing, I thought Urad was a bigger, yellow, oily looking lentil. And then, right at that moment, a shopkeeper walked through my aisle, saw my furrowed eyebrows, and asked if he could help me with anything. He was so friendly and his actions so uncharacteristically customer oriented for a desi store that against my strict policy of not drawing any attention to myself while shopping in Indian or Pakistani stores, I asked him where I could find the mash ki daal. And I had to use the Urdu word for it, because I have no idea what mash ki daal would be called in Urdu. Believe me, I was dreading the response, expecting something along the lines of "Well, daal means lentil, do you know what kind of lentil you'd like?" Something similarly assumptive about my non-knowledge about the very thing I'd just asked him for. It was such a surprise when that didn't happen. He told me that Urad and Mash daals are the same, but because the guy didn't bat an eyelash at my Urdu, so I had the confiendence to ask him which was the oily one I was thinking of. (It's Toor.)
Anyway, this story isn't about lentils. It's about how I was so so so happy to find a desi store that I felt comfortable in. It's been months now and I shop there all the time. I think the owners are a young Pakistani couple who speak in barely-accented English but M says they've spoken to him and the baby in Urdu as well. There are some day shift employees also and they are also very nice, once even carrying all my purchases to the car when I had the baby with me. I loved shopping there, sure I still got some weird looks, but I've been in there so many times recently, buying almost everything Pakistanis require in a well-stocked pantry, that I thought we had an understanding. I seriously loved this place so much I googled them and wrote internet reviews for their shop.
Until yesterday.
I was buying lots of stuff, and at the very last minute, I remembered that we only had half a cone of henna paste. My SIL had bought it there two weeks prior, and I thought I'd get another just in case. So I told the woman ringing me up that I'd recently bought a mendhi cone there, and did she still have any left? She took one out and asked "Do you like mendhi?" Stupid question, I thought - I'd just told her about a previous purchase, plus I was buying one NOW, so what the heck does she think?
But I brushed it off, she didn't mean anything by it, of course.
So I said, "Yes, I like mehndi." Then I showed her my palms, with almost-gone traces of my SIL's designs from before and asked "Do you know where this mehndhi is from?"
I was asking because when we'd bought the first one, my SIL had looked at the label and said she thought it was from Meena Bazaar in Karachi - a big area of Karachi teaming with different beauty parlors and shops. I'd been to Meena Bazaar on our first trip in Karachi, to get the Mendhi done for the Valima wedding reception function we threw back then. It was the best mehndi I'd ever had done, and my MIL has sent me pre-filled cones of henna paste from meena bazaar from there before as well. I was curious about whether this was from the same area, and if so I wondered how they got it. To be honest, I was also hoping to gain some ground from the "Do you like mendhi?" question. I was trying to prove that I was knowledgeable about Pakistani culture. So I asked the question. "Do you know where this mendhi is from?" and she said...
"Actually - it's from LEAVES!"
