Rakesh Raghunathan
| Picture Credit score: Particular Association
Style usually drives reminiscence; be it a aromatic chutney that reminds one of many mundane, or a spicy kebab that invokes celebration.
This 12 months, at The Hindu Lit Fest 2024, a panel titled A Style of Reminiscence: A Celebration of Meals and Household, will deliver writers and custodians of culinary traditions Tarana Husain Khan and Rakesh Raghunathan in dialog with Deepa S Reddy.
“Each Tarana Khan and Rakesh Raghunathan are involved in plunging a hand again into historical past and pulling out forgotten recollections and recipes,” says Deepa, creator and cultural anthropologist, who will average the panel. “We are inclined to assume {that a} recipe is simply one thing that results in a completed dish. However there may be a lot that’s accrued with a recipe: private that means, social that means, household associations — good, dangerous, unhappy and the whole lot in between,” says Deepa. Each the panellists are making various kinds of effort in direction of tracing the various features surrounding culinary reminiscence.
Tarana’s work goes past simply textual documentation. “The method truly begins by discovering some reference in oral or written historical past of a spot, then going deeper into the written historical past. The cookbooks that I check with are normally from the 19th Century or later. I additionally join with the cooking communities to grasp the meals historical past round it. There could be a store or an eatery that may start this course of. My work has quite a bit to do with oral and written historical past, major and secondary sources, and at last I attempt to recreate the recipes,” says Tarana. What excites the author most by this course of is making that very first connection — to a narrative heard in childhood, or a definite style.
The author is helming the revival of tilakchandan rice native to Rampur. The dialog then will impinge on the significance of this form of restoration, and goes past easy nostalgia to recreate misplaced worlds, says Deepa.
Tarana Husain Khan
| Picture Credit score:
Particular Association
“What are the doable artistic works which have advanced? For me personally, the narrative [of the talk] would take the route of what one can perceive from the culinary traditions and oral historical past that has been handed down generations,” says Rakesh. His tryst with documentation started with a visit to Tirunelveli, the place he got here throughout a farming neighborhood reaping the bountiful harvest, all whereas singing in celebration. And beside, in a big cauldron, they have been cooking one thing that they known as ‘Kootanchoru’. “Everybody swimming pools of their assets to make this dish collectively, regardless of their social strata within the village. And folks from neighbouring villages additionally be part of. They cook dinner it collectively on festive events.”
This was a wonderful story of how meals brings folks collectively, and the way meals can by no means divide that propelled Rakesh on this journey. And so, he believes that each recipe, or ingredient that we use at this time has a narrative – possibly of conquest, celebration, victories and even adversity.
Over the course of the dialog, Deepa hopes to level to a area, a recipe or a small subset of recipes to speak concerning the recollections and social tales which have been uncovered.
The panel might be held at The Hindu Pavilion on January 27 from 12.55 to 1.45 pm.