Globalisation and the food on my platter tonite

Imagine this, I am  sitting thousands of miles away from home, missing home, thinking of home and thinking of the food  cooked by mumma and the local Manipuri delicacies. But the same day for dinner I had Oukabi- Atouba, Kobi ga Nga ga thongba  & Yongchak ga Hawai maton singju, does that sounds like a really exotic Manipuri food platter, but how is it possible to be having all the manipuri delicacies sitting here in The Hague. Well the answer is rather very simple, global trade, Global free trade or in the most popular word 'Globalisation', we may not realize or thinking twice before picking something from the counter of a supermarket about the origin of the food we are buying, where does it come from, under what conditions it was grown/breed, how did it reached the counter and most importantly how much did the food growers earned. Globalisation makes import/export much easier compared to earlier days, Global trade has been happening since time immemorial but now the chances of me finding items from 20 different country in 1 single supermarket is really high compared to 10 or 15 years before. 

Today I was in a very good and positive mood, having made some progress in my RP I felt I needed to shop.....yeah shop but unlike a lot of people I shop for food when m happy....so I picked my bike and went to the best Chinese shop in town. While going through the frozen Fish/Meat/Sea food section I found a picket of Nga Oukabi , m not used to buying Oukabi which is packed well and imported from Vietnam, I picked up another packet of fish a 'Tinfoil barb' which is similar to small Karpu mach  imported again from Vietnam. I moved on to the vegetable section and found Fresh and well packed Haiwai-maton, I was rather excited to see it, I mean we don't get these things even in another part of India lets say Delhi or Bangalore but finding Hawai-maton in Hague sure triggered happiness in me. I also bought a packet of  green Yongchak Maru, I checked the origin of both the item and it was imported from Thailand. So there I was buying things from all over the world from 1 single counter. 

This makes me think how each of us are connected to someone unknown through the food we buy, the connection we hardly think or care about. At the end of the day all we care is the food on the platter.