If there is one thing I choose to post about repeatedly on social media, it is food. My social media is often a celebration of food – either as recipe, or as the cultural artefact of everyday living. And perhaps this is true of the urban cultural scene in cities like Delhi. Food is a topic that manages to evoke nostalgia by denoting a certain depth of experience, even as it indicates your range and breadth of travel, and know-how about cultures that are not your own. Your knowledge of cheese, wine and sushi are often considered hallmarks of sophistication. Food in urban spaces and on social media have become uncritical ways of showcasing diversity and cosmopolitanism.
During these past four months, and especially during the first two of COVID-19 isolation, food became a mode of bonding – because what else could we do locked inside our homes that was both creative and nourishing? In private discussions, on social media and in food-related groups, recipe exchanges proliferated, much to one's joy and chagrin. Chagrin, because suddenly disparities in living conditions and access came more sharply into focus. And yet many of these thoughts had been cooking in my head even before the pandemic.
My mother had an intercaste love marriage in the early 1980s in the small town of Siliguri in West Bengal, where most inhabitants were immigrants. Both parents inherited immense loss because they were both children of immigrants due to the Partition – they lost the geography to which food is primarily linked, especially in a pre-globalised world. So my mother's family stuck to their traditions with the gusto that is typical of loss, since recipes could be passed on where much else was forever gone.
My mother often told me how aghast she was, newly married into this big joint family, to see that they ate rice for breakfast. Her father, although far from rich, fed his six children toast and butter every morning with eggs, something she remembered with pride as a leftover of their Dhaka tradition. Even after marriage, my mother replicated the loss of caste and country, often on and through the dining table.