... is actually pretty darn good!
We stumbled across this Indian restaurant a block away from the university, called Gagaja. None of the Indians in our group have any idea what that name means, but we were all fairly impressed by the quality of their food.
We went out to dinner there on Monday, before heading over to play a game of 'Escape'... the details of which merit a blog post of its own.
The restaurant is staffed by the local Chinese people, and the decor is interesting. The place is large and the room where we were seated was dominated by a large mural of Lord Vishnu's Matsya avatar, partially visible in the picture above. Matsya (meaning fish) is one of the more obscure deities and not something I expected to see outside of India. The Matsya avatar plays a central role in the Vedic version of the "great flood", which has versions across various cultures around the world such as Noah's ark, Gilgamesh... and there is also a Chinese flood narrative set during the reign of the legendary Emperor Yao.
This is probably a digression from China Lab stuff, but cultural mythologies are quite fascinating in their richness and their surprising commonalities across cultures. The psychologist Carl Jung has some interesting ideas about mythology and the psyche, for anyone interested in exploring that space.
To sum up, the eggplant dish was delicious! :-)