A Culinary Journey Through Memory

They say food is that which brings together family and community, and there truly is a quiet intimacy about sharing food cooked at one hearth. But when one thinks about it, it is also inextricably entwined with individual identity and how we perceive ourselves as part of a cultural mosaic. Indeed if our lives were multiple trains running along parallel railway lines, food would be that greeting us at the junctions as we stepped off, allowing us to share a space, momentary yet memorable, before we parted ways again. 

Food and memory overlap in mysterious ways–in food are embedded, memories; and in every memory, some inkling of all those emotions that food evoke–happiness, love, warmth, comfort, patience. As I look back on my life’s culinary journey, I invite you to look back upon yours too–with the assurance that you’ll find in unassuming corners some of your own memories, with the same joy and surprise if you’d found a hidden coin in your pocket. 

The intersections of food with the foreign and familiar, in both spaces and emotions, are rather curious. The taste of home in an unfamiliar city where you feel lost, makes you yearn yet feel a little less homesick. It can also be the sweet thrill of adventure–of stepping outside a comfortable boundary to discover something equally as exciting on the other side. I remember my family’s first foreign trip to Dubai–with not-particularly-inviting aromas of fish and meat swirling around us, we stumbled upon a lone MTR just down the street from our hotel. The simplicity in that rich meal of poori-saagu felt nothing short of a homecoming. The next day, however, eating a buttery croissant at the top of the Burj Khalifa induced in me once again, the adrenaline of being in another world where anything was possible–a buzz that lingered long after the last crumbs had been polished. This continuous back-and-forth of the comfort residing in the known versus the longing for the unknown embodies to me, the magic in food.

There’s a reason why food is for, and of the soul–like fluid energy, it can be your anchor in unsailed seas, but it can also transform the foreign into a memory to always be cherished. Walking into my junior college for the first time, it was an intimidating ocean of strangers, made up of nooks and corners I had nothing to remember by. How several chais consumed sitting at the age-old canteen benches against torrential rain, misal and vada pav disappearing into laughter and friendship, and many exploits into neighbouring cafés after classes, metamorphosized what I so deeply feared into a place that changed my life, still baffles me.

Even after watching hundreds of episodes of Masterchef Australia, what never ceases to amaze me is how every plate of food tells a story–simultaneously that which connects you to your roots and symbolizes where you want to go next. So much of what we eat is deeply contrasting–in terms of taste, geography and culture. Yet we may eat bits and pieces from all continents in a single day and what will linger is only the satisfaction of having had a good meal. The night of a family wedding in the small village of Shirali near my grandfather’s hometown of Kumta in Karnataka, we sat down to eat at one of the many long tables lined with banana leaves, stomachs rumbling with hunger. The anticipation and change in the air was palpable as steaming rice and sambhar was heaped; with the many chutneys running into each other, topped off by a crisp papad. But what I remember most is receiving a serving of appam kheer, spiced and textured with rich ghee, sticky appe (usually a sweet made from flour) and milk at the end of the meal. Perhaps it is because I almost denied the serving (as a result of being too full—the end result of every Indian wedding ceremony) or perhaps it is because the smell was too heavenly to ever forget–but each time, I think of vitality and ceremony, of food made with devotion and heart, I can never forget the kheer or the creamy batatya lonche (a spicy potato curry native to Karnataka) wondrously eaten in another summer in Kumta—with my family around me. This is where my roots lie.

Inevitably, we also actively seek out certain foods, a sweet reminder of where we’d like to go– our dreams, aspirations and how we visualize our futures.

-In ‘seoul’ by RM of BTS, RM writes and sings about he, who came to Seoul as a trainee in the entertainment industry in his teenage years, has nothing to reminisce the city by. With its ashy buildings and fast-paced, indifferent life, what kind of ‘soul’ could it possibly have? Yet the harmony with which the city now thrums has now become part of who he is, and he, a part of the city, a city which keeps him constantly guessing. He has come to love the scents that intermingle, even the fishy smell of Cheonggyecheon and the lonesomeness of Seongdo—what was once unfamiliar has become part of him; and he, a part of Seoul. The way the song is composed and sung has a dual and very powerful impact—the nostalgia of a resident who finds Seoul both familiar and strange; and the nostalgia the listener feels, for a place (and all that it holds) s/he has never visited-

In ‘seoul’ by RM of bts, RM writes and sings about he, who came to Seoul as a trainee in the entertainment industry has nothing to reminisce the city by, with its ashy buildings and fast-paced, indifferent life, what kind of ‘soul’ could it possibly have? Yet the harmony with which the city now thrums has now become part of who he is, and he, a part of the city, a city which keeps him constantly guessing. He has come to love the scents that intermingle, even the fishy smell of Cheonggyecheon and the lonesomeness of Seongdyo—what was once unfamiliar has become part of him; and he, a part of Seoul. The way the song is composed and sung has a dual and very powerful impact—the nostalgia of a resident who finds Seoul both familiar and strange; and the nostalgia the listener feels, for a place (and all that it holds) s/he has never visited.

So much of culture is transmitted through the media that it is almost impossible to not think of the many possibilities that lie ahead. I for one, can’t help but fantasize about the day when I’ll eat piping ramyun straight out of the cup while sitting along the banks of the Han River (a magical day when I’ll know how to use chopsticks), as I watch Korean cooking vlogs in the midst of a midnight hunger pang; or even want to eat large pizza slices (often eaten as street food in Italy) as I wander down small cobblestoned streets in Rome. There is something very powerful about food–the way it comforts us when we feel like interlopers, entices us into the extraordinary, and pleasures us as we revel in its experience, indeed reveling in the creation of memory itself. A familiar aroma makes us gravitate down even an unfamiliar alley, the smokiness of the tandoor, the sound of wheels churning fresh sugarcane juice, the sparks of bhutta (corn on the cob) as it roasts, the bemusement of taking off our glasses in the anticipation of steam rising from hot coffee–this riot of the senses and colour organically float upwards from the deep recesses of memory and meld together no sooner than the brain comprehends the words. There is something both sacred and intimate about the time my friends and I ate around a bonfire, nestled in the mountains; about how fondly I remember crossing my fingers for rajma-chawal or kadhi-khichadi and how triumphant I felt when the smell disclosed the secret. Food thrums with the same beat that the heart does, it says something powerful about who we are; and that’s why it touches us so deeply. A smile gathers on our faces. Like always, the smile says it all. 

As much as food is raw and real, it’s also a cultural symbol which is difficult to navigate, and often, even controversial to identify with. Jiayang Fan mentions in “Chronicles of a Bubble-Tea Addict” in the New Yorker, that a large population of the GenZ Asian-American youth wield bubble tea (originally from Taiwan) as the trademark commodity of their Asian identity. However, it often manifests as a narrow consumerist version of how they wish to project their identity in compliance with Instagram-friendly trends, while ‘true engagement with the politics of their Asian identity’ is still largely lacking. Food calls for unhesitant assimilation; and perhaps does have the potential to unite us on a global platter; but even such optimism encounters barriers. Is it when students flock to the nearby Starbucks to less sip on a coffee than upload a memory of the day spent with ‘modern’ friends, that we are embracing the notion of ‘global citizen’? Or is it ‘respectable fusion’ when I am drawn to the fresh caramelized onion stuffed buns as I walk past a local bakery–local flavours being inspired by foreign recipes? Are we celebrating food when we happily crunch on ‘Indian’ pani-puri, whose stuffing is made of the foreign-made-essential potato or is it when we sit in the floor to consume in one gulp our grandmother’s freshly made buttermilk? These are questions that pull us in opposite directions–perhaps, we can never really locate where we stand against food, or how the food that we believe represents different parts of who we are, stand against the world. 

What comes to mind then, is how food can be the channel of freedom and of expression of both individuality and community, without the pressing need to deliberately attach it or project it as fixed components of identity or cultural exchange. This feeling has been particularly amplified through the pandemic as the mostly home-cooked food we ate, held some semblance of familiarity in teeming uncertainty, even as the food we craved eluded our reach.

We held onto this comfortable anchor, some of us even experimented with it–the whiff of freshly baked cake and the first hit of steamed momos with the opening of the lid cracked apart the monotony and brought contentment, if only a little.

Food is versatile, evoking something unanimous within us that allows us to both honour our own and embrace the other–the way one might first eye a foreigner with some curiosity and suspicion but then break into a smile as they attempt to speak our language, however chipped it might be. It may have come to associate itself with many connotations–the idea of the ‘traditional’ as ‘uncool’ and the ‘expensive’ with the modern and cultured. Despite such contradictory grey areas that human beings will invariably give rise to and debate, if one pauses for a moment to zoom out and look at the broader memories that food will always make in our hearts, we may see food as the ‘the unifying language of shared experience’ as Fan puts it, and ourselves, as children of the Earth, celebrating its harvest.