India: A Million Mutinies Now - pg. 247

A fresh banana leaf was a beautiful thing to eat off: dark green, with a hollow spine of a paler colour, the leaf itself smooth yet with grip, ribbed, with a slight sheen, impermeable, with no intrusive smell or taste. To eat off a leaf like that not only marked a special occasion; it became associated, in the most romantic way, with religion, making one think of one's remote origins, and of the forests through which the Hindu epic heroes, divinities, wandered during the years of their exile.