JOIN USWhat is revealed in what we don't eat...
It was Tabish Khair’s chapter ‘Jootha’ that first drew me into Desi Delicacies: Food Writing from Muslim South Asia, an anthology edited by Claire Chambers. It made me think about what is revealed through what we don’t eat, and what we are not allowed to eat. The ones who fast on Thursday, the ones who don’t eat garlic, the milk-haters, those who eat beef only in private.
Khair explores the roots of jootha — very much to do with caste and notions of purity — and how difficult it is to translate the term into English. “It is not jhootha, which would mean ‘liar’; it is also not joota, which would mean ‘shoe’. It is jootha. Jootha is food that has already been tasted by others,” he writes. He goes on to speak of the complexity of jootha. On the one hand, it reeks of caste violence, having been used as a tool of oppression.
On the other hand, it is also a sign of intimacy, like when a parent eats a child’s leftover food or the sharing of food between lovers. “It is considered the ultimate sign of closeness. We are one, the gesture proclaims, your body is my body, your saliva is my saliva.” This hadn’t ever struck me, that a thing of affection can just as easily be used for hostility, or vice versa.
Over the past two years, as the editor of a food-centred platform, food has been on my mind more than ever. And not just because I’m perpetually hungry. I’m starting to comprehend what impacts people’s food choices, how complicated people’s relationships are with what they eat, and the feelings it evokes: from euphoria and comfort to shame and guilt. In the Introduction, the editor speaks of choosing a subject like food, and the pleasures of eating, because it goes beyond what Muslims are now expected to write about. And in that regard, I must admit to savouring every bit of Sarvat Hasin’s essay ‘Stone Soup’. She writes about how she finally took to cooking because of boredom and loneliness over a long summer but soon discovered how calming and magical it could be. And also, sexy.
There’s such ease and elegance to Hasin’s writing, and I related to the fact that she was a late bloomer in the kitchen. “I didn’t want to be domesticated, I didn’t want to be marriageable and biddable.” But her writing is also playful and shows great delight in the simple pleasures of cooking. “First soak your lentils for at least six hours. They will swell in the water like fat little stones,” she writes, about the first steps to making dal. I lay in bed, reading her recipe instructions, and felt a fleeting desire to bake. “The best way to host a dinner party, really, is to make something you can toss in the oven and forget about,” she writes.
She covers Nigella Lawson’s deathly sweet chocolate tart — a favourite in her “household of sweet teeth” — roasted cauliflower tacos, a stir fry, and ends the essay with her own version of kali dal, different from what they regularly ate back at home in Karachi. But that is also what makes cooking creative, right? The satisfaction of taking a familiar recipe, and making it your own.
Desi Delicacies is divided into two parts: essays, and stories, and there are many moving and wonderful pieces in it by Muslim writers from South Asia like Annie Zaidi, Nadeem Aslam, Farah Yameen, and Sophia Khan.
This is not an easy time for Muslims in India — with cow vigilantism on the rise, and everyday acts of discrimination. As I write, histories in school textbooks are being altered and erased, which makes it even more vital for us to stand with each other, and actively resist ideas of hate and otherness. And perhaps, food is one way of melting away these false boundaries.
This Eid, I hope you got your share of biryani, haleem, and the most tender of kebabs.
The author is a Bengaluru-based writer and editor who believes in the power of daily naps. Find her on Instagram @yaminivijayan
Unbound is a monthly column for anyone who likes to take shelter in books, and briefly forget the dreariness of adult life.