Seeing the World through a Bowl of Khmer Chicken Curry

Champey smiled as if she was indulging a child. “You like?” she asked, spooning more Khmer chicken curry in my plate. I take great conceit in not being a foodie. But here I was, smiling rather idiotically - a divine melange of flavours had just exploded in my mouth : familiar, yet alien; chewy, yet soft; spicy but sweet – beaming from ear to ear.

Sitting on a narrow bench in Siem Reap’s steaming local market amidst shops selling everything - from writhing fish and baskets encrusted with live crabs; from mounds of wildly coloured fruits to nearly every imaginable leafy vegetable; from farm tools to trendy shorts to knock-off backpacks to filigreed silver pendants, I blinked.

Despite the sensory overload, the market whiffed of a harmonious calm. Vendors sat by, content to gossip rather than aggressively pursue shoppers. Children pushed toys through slippery aisles even as hair dressers clipped grey cresses of older men.

Was I naively imagining paradise? I am too hard-nosed to be a romantic. Cambodia had never been an isolated backwater, I had learned. It had been a nation ruling thousands of miles - an empire which had created breath-taking monuments, whose art, cuisine and bounty had been celebrated through the region. Later, the modern world had cruelly intruded, first through French colonialism, then through secret US bombings and finally, through a soul destroying genocide where Cambodian brutally turned on Cambodian, trying to take the country back to the year Zero.

And yet… despite the crushing weight of that recent history, there was a yin and yang to this place, I felt. A culture that could produce such an amazing combination of flavours in its food, where people smiled so much, that emanated such peace and calm – that was not all just my imagination, was it? Cambodia would have to be understood, I realised.

In the meantime, equally important things beckoned. Watching me slurp my curry, Champey pointed at a nearby stall. “Ice-cream-drink. You like?”