Taylor Stearman

Paper 5

2/28/16

David Luna

I had a bit of a difficult time finding a cultural event that I could attend, that didn’t

interfere with my schedule, however, after reviewing the options that were presented in the

syllabus I was able to find a satisfactory solution. I decided to go out to eat at an Indian

restaurant and watch an Indian film. In this paper, I will be discussing my experiences and what I

have learned from this “cultural immersion” of sorts.

For the restaurant portion of this experience, I chose to eat at Guru Palace, which is

located on the northeast corner of Gilbert and Baseline in Gilbert, AZ. I live extremely close to

this establishment and have considered eating there many times, but was always apprehensive,

because I had never tried Indian cuisine. I must say that I am forever indebted to this assignment,

because I was blown away by how much I enjoyed the food. When I walked in to the restaurant

the first thing that I noticed was a huge painting of the Taj Mahal that took up the majority of the

wall space. However, other than the Taj Mahal painting and a few much smaller ones that

depicted elephants and plant life native to India, the restaurant looked fairly western.

When trying to decide what to eat, for some reason I was in the mood for a beef dish, but

was surprised when they only seemed to offer chicken, lamb, or vegetable dishes. After

reflecting on this for a second I recalled learning in a world religions class that the Hindu

religion is quite prevalent in India. This led me to the realization that beef was likely not on the

menu because in the Hindu religion eating beef is forbidden.

For my meal I decided to go with two appetizers, mushroom pakoras and tandoori

chicken wings, and one entree, tandoori chicken. As I discussed previously, I was pleasantly

surprised at how much I enjoyed every dish. The mushroom pakoras looked to me like popcorn

chicken and oddly enough had a similar taste as well. I will say that I had never had a dish even

remotely like this previous to this experience and am already craving more. Initially, I had

anticipated that the tandoori chicken wings would have some foreign and unfamiliar spices that

would differentiate them from a western style chicken wing, yet this was not the case. Though I

am not disappointed, the tandoori chicken wings tasted very similar to the western style wings

that I am familiar with. The biggest difference in these wings was the dipping sauces that they

came with. One was a green puree that smelled of lemons and parsley and the other was brown

and had a sweet barbeque-esque taste to it. Both sauces had flavors that were completely foreign

to me, yet I found them delicious. When the tandoori chicken came out I was a bit intimidated

because it was red and very spicy looking. After a brief moment of hesitation I decided to give it

a try. I was pleasantly surprised to find that not only was the spice tolerable, the chicken was

amazing. I found the meal so delicious that I actually finished all three plates, which is somewhat

rare as I am relatively thin. I am so happy about this assignment, because had it not been

assigned I likely would have never actually tried this great restaurant.

For the next portion of this assignment I decided that I wanted to watch a movie that was

highly acclaimed in India last year (2015). The movie that I decided on is titled Baby and

received critical acclaim in multiple countries including the U.S. Though this movie was a bit

long, with a run time of two hours and forty-nine minutes, I found it to be engaging throughout

the entire film. The premise of the film focuses on the main character Ajay and a counter-

intelligence unit that he is apart of. Upon stopping a terrorist act in the opening scenes, the unit

discovers a major terrorist plot targeting India. Throughout the movie Ajay and the counter-

intelligence unit are presented with numerous challenges that they must overcome in order to

prevent the attack and take down the leader of the terrorist organization. This portion of the

assignment was very interesting to me, because it gave me a deeper look into the Indian culture.

One of the first things that I noticed while watching this film was its focus on terrorism.

Terrorism is a topic that is very prevalent in the U.S. due to events such as 9/11, however, I had

never considered how other countries view this topic. I guess I was a bit surprised initially that

terrorism was that widespread of a topic, yet I am unsure of why I had these pre-conceptions.

Another thing that stuck out to me was how similar the plot and scene structure was to many

western films. As I analyzed this more I kept on coming across the word Bollywood. Upon

researching what this was I learned some very interesting things about the Indian culture and

western influence. Bollywood is India’s version of Hollywood, only according to statistics it is a

larger version. For example in 2011, over 3.5 billion Bollywood film tickets were sold across the

globe which in comparison is 900,000 tickets more than that of Hollywood films that year.

Before participating in this assignment, I had no idea what Bollywood was or that it had a larger

base than that of Hollywood films. Overall, I enjoyed both the cinematography and plot of this

film, as well as experiencing film from a culture other than my own.

In conclusion, though I initially was not looking forward to this assignment, I am

extremely pleased with the outcome. After completing this activity, I now feel more open to

experiencing things from various cultures. Additionally, I am now quite intrigued by the Indian

culture and look forward to experiencing more elements of it in the future.

DocumentationFilm

Mushroom Pakoras

Tandoori Chicken

Tandoori Chicken Wings

Sari Shop Locations

1. Nandini Corporation. (480) 890-5690. 525 W. Southern AVE. NO. 107 Mesa, AZ 85210.

2. Zee & R Creations. (480) 777-1057. 1941 W. Guadalupe RD. Mesa, AZ 85202.

3. Amul Sarees & Dresses. (480) 496-9090. 5423 Wgeronimo ST. Chandler, AZ 85226.

Initially I was going to go Sari shopping as well, however, I ran into some issues and feel

that I need to give some background information in regard to the outcome. My girlfriend and I

attempted to go to three different Sari shops that we found online, but had no luck. The first two

shops that we went to we were unable to locate and the phones were disconnected. This leads me

to believe that they probably either closed or relocated. The address of the third shop that we

tried led us to a seemingly regular house in a residential neighborhood. We did not feel

comfortable going up to the door as there were no signs regarding the business and no lights

were on as of 7pm (online says that they close at 8pm). I called the phone number of the business

and though it was active, there was no answer, but this shop does still seem to be in business

considering their active phone number and answering machine. At this point I decided that the

movie and restaurant would have to do.