(This article is part of 'Ways of eating': a mini-series on food in Southasia)
What could be an academic's concern for the niceties and nuances of food and eating? At the same time, as a blind woman, how did I engage with the complexities and drudgery of cooking to turn it into my passion? For those who are familiar with my work and my interests, this piece may come as a surprise. Admittedly, I am no food connoisseur. Yet, I feel compelled to write about my experience and narrate what led me to tread a hitherto untraversed terrain, a transformation which is not sudden, mystical and inexplicable but gradual and conscious, aimed at understanding who I am and breaking away from the various symbolic constraints that determine and dictate my life.
I was born with a genetic eye disease called retinitis pigmentosa in the burgeoning small town of Sidhpur in Gujarat in the Dawoodi Bohra Muslim milieu. In due course, my parents migrated to Kolkata in search of greener pastures. Their chief concern was to make sure I received a good education. I went to an inclusive school and was in the midst of kids who could see and read and write and run around. As I grew up, I became cognisant of my disability and wanted to withdraw. I was an introvert – shy, timid, reclusive, always shunning the presence of too many people while despising exclusion, deprivation, and marginalisation.
Eating with others was the most serious cause of anxiety for me. I would not mind friends eating from my tiffin but was always reluctant to eat from theirs. How could I know what they were offering, unless explicitly told? I was too diffident to ask. Even if I attempted to conjecture on the basis of some passing comments that a particular member of my group had my favourite delectable in her tiffin, how could I even fathom how much of it was there and how much I was expected to pick up? I did not want to make a fool of myself. Nor could I allow myself to be the cause of unconscionable mirth or the subject of repulsive tete-a-tetes. I began concocting excuses for staying away from eating events. To avert the possibility of having to eat with others, I started exhibiting strong dislikes and severe reservations against specific kinds of food. This could have led inadvertently to my selective eating habits that have remained with me till today.