Food has always been one of the strongest sources of nostalgia. The other life experiences that provide the building blocks of nostalgia may come later, but food always goes back to childhood. So when Marcel Proust’s narrator tasted the Madeleine dipped in lime flower tea, it was a childhood memory he was transported to, which set in motion the process that resulted in Remembrance of Things Past.
Food & nostalgia has long featured in India as well. One could argue that when Lord Krishna claimed to have nostalgia for Poha, it was more to put at an ease his childhood friend Sudama, who had brought him some. Babar was certainly nostalgic for his home in Ferghana when he moaned that India has “no garpes, musk lemons or first-rates fruits, no ice or cold water, no bread or cooked food in the bazaar”.
When British first came to India, their complaints mirrored Babar’s but in a generation a change took place. Once they were born and lived here as children, their childhood memories were then of Indian food, and that is what they longed back in England. They were the ones who opened the first Indian restaurants in UK, like the Hyderabad born Edward Palmer who founded Veerswamy’s wrote one of the first British books on Indian cooking and sold Indian food products to other like him.
Today the excile from India are Indians themselves, of two kinds-the first generation, for whom the longing for the taste of home is kinds-the first generation for whom its more sharp and the second (and the third generation, as well) generation for whom its more subtle yet still strong. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs.Sen, in her story of the same name is the first kind, slowly going to pieces of loneliness of America, cooking in-appropriately elaborate meals for which she goes to great length to get the right spices and fish, but nothing really works.
Piya in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide is the second style of exile, who doesn’t consider herself as one until almost unwillingly she is seduced to nostalgia as she sees her boatman Fokir preparing a meal: “Even as she recoiled from the smell, she couldn’t tear her eyes from his flying fingers: it was through she were a child again, standing on the counter, beside a stove:, it was her mother’s hands she was watching……..” This rediscovered the nostalgia a potent force, driving desi kiks like Padma Laxmi & Anjum Anand to write books, present TV shows and sell merchandise that all serve up suitably updated nostalgia(like olive oil, since ghee is taking far the nostalgia).
Now this of nostalgia cuisine is coming to India too, as a new generation discovers how far it has come from its roots. The recession helps now people to have the time to try out the time consuming recipes, they shrank from before. A friend recently told me that she made the amazing mango pickle her grandmother used to; discovering of course, that the old lady evidently left out a key ingredient from the recipe she bequeathed her, so now my friend has to do it again to find out what it was!
The most imposing from this nostalgia cuisine has taken is a book of the same name by Sucharitha Reddy, wife of Dr Pratap Reddy of Apollo Hospitals. Huge, heavy, lavishly illustrated and priced at a whopping Rs.3000 with profits going to a charitable initiative of Apollo Hospitals, its an interesting product, though seems more aimed to demonstrating present prestige than past cuisines.
But this same spirit is also resulting in other efforts like Dadimano Vars, the really valuable compilation of Palanpuri Jain cooking and even a simple book of Mangolarean home cooking, I found at my grocer’s. Just tilted “Maa Recipes” , it is a simple published compilation of a mother’s recipes done by her children.It’s a charming way of remembering a person, particularly women of certain generation for whom food was one of the few ways they could express themselves. In this remembering and the recipes preserved, the many values of nostalgia cuisines are well demonstrated.
Food & nostalgia has long featured in India as well. One could argue that when Lord Krishna claimed to have nostalgia for Poha, it was more to put at an ease his childhood friend Sudama, who had brought him some. Babar was certainly nostalgic for his home in Ferghana when he moaned that India has “no garpes, musk lemons or first-rates fruits, no ice or cold water, no bread or cooked food in the bazaar”.
When British first came to India, their complaints mirrored Babar’s but in a generation a change took place. Once they were born and lived here as children, their childhood memories were then of Indian food, and that is what they longed back in England. They were the ones who opened the first Indian restaurants in UK, like the Hyderabad born Edward Palmer who founded Veerswamy’s wrote one of the first British books on Indian cooking and sold Indian food products to other like him.
Today the excile from India are Indians themselves, of two kinds-the first generation, for whom the longing for the taste of home is kinds-the first generation for whom its more sharp and the second (and the third generation, as well) generation for whom its more subtle yet still strong. Jhumpa Lahiri’s Mrs.Sen, in her story of the same name is the first kind, slowly going to pieces of loneliness of America, cooking in-appropriately elaborate meals for which she goes to great length to get the right spices and fish, but nothing really works.
Piya in Amitav Ghosh’s The Hungry Tide is the second style of exile, who doesn’t consider herself as one until almost unwillingly she is seduced to nostalgia as she sees her boatman Fokir preparing a meal: “Even as she recoiled from the smell, she couldn’t tear her eyes from his flying fingers: it was through she were a child again, standing on the counter, beside a stove:, it was her mother’s hands she was watching……..” This rediscovered the nostalgia a potent force, driving desi kiks like Padma Laxmi & Anjum Anand to write books, present TV shows and sell merchandise that all serve up suitably updated nostalgia(like olive oil, since ghee is taking far the nostalgia).
Now this of nostalgia cuisine is coming to India too, as a new generation discovers how far it has come from its roots. The recession helps now people to have the time to try out the time consuming recipes, they shrank from before. A friend recently told me that she made the amazing mango pickle her grandmother used to; discovering of course, that the old lady evidently left out a key ingredient from the recipe she bequeathed her, so now my friend has to do it again to find out what it was!
The most imposing from this nostalgia cuisine has taken is a book of the same name by Sucharitha Reddy, wife of Dr Pratap Reddy of Apollo Hospitals. Huge, heavy, lavishly illustrated and priced at a whopping Rs.3000 with profits going to a charitable initiative of Apollo Hospitals, its an interesting product, though seems more aimed to demonstrating present prestige than past cuisines.
But this same spirit is also resulting in other efforts like Dadimano Vars, the really valuable compilation of Palanpuri Jain cooking and even a simple book of Mangolarean home cooking, I found at my grocer’s. Just tilted “Maa Recipes” , it is a simple published compilation of a mother’s recipes done by her children.It’s a charming way of remembering a person, particularly women of certain generation for whom food was one of the few ways they could express themselves. In this remembering and the recipes preserved, the many values of nostalgia cuisines are well demonstrated.
