“Food is an accessible thing that everyone can relate to,” says Ishani Debroy, one of the curators of ‘Writings from the Hearth’, an ongoing library exhibition at the Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS). The descriptions of food and customs around it, she adds, are an interesting way of learning about a culture. “We also thought it (food) was an interesting tool writers use to add flavour and character to their stories,” says Ms. Debroy, a part of the IIHS Word Lab, who worked with Asha Jhina, and the IIHS library team to assemble this exhibit of around 60 books.
As the name suggests, the collection of books that are part of this exhibition explores the landscape of food writing, unearthing culture, identity, history, oppression, cityscapes, sustainability, and so much more through what we eat. Some of the books on display include Michael Krondl’s The Taste of Conquest, which explores how the desire for spices changed the world; Samanth Subramanian’s charming travelogue Following Fish; Krish Ashok’s scientific take on Indian Cooking, Masala Lab, and Mexican novelist Laura Esquivel’s 1992 novel, Like Water for Chocolate, among many others.
“Food writing has arrived at a critical space,” believes Pooja Sagar, who heads both the IIHS Library and Word Lab, adding that these books go far beyond the realms of the kitchen, venturing into concerns of culture, caste, politics, and identity. For instance, The 1Shanthiroad Cookbook, edited by Suresh Jayaram, which is also part of the exhibition, is far more than a collection of recipes, she points out. “It was published by Reliable Copy, which usually only publishes art books,” she says. “The aesthetics of recipes and food have changed.”
Some of the books on display include Michael Krondl’s The Taste of Conquest, Samanth Subramanian’s charming travelogue Following Fish, and Krish Ashok’s scientific take on Indian Cooking, Masala Lab. | Photo Credit: HANDOUT E MAIL
Conversations around food
The idea for this exhibition stemmed from an event held at IIHS back in May 2023. As part of City Scripts, the institute’s annual cultural festival, a panel discussion around food was organised, also called Writing from the Hearth: Food, Writin and Memories. “I had been personally looking at people doing journalism around food,” says Ms. Debroy, who began researching food and food writing back then, “and came across a treasure trove of authors, journalists, food scientists and chefs,” she says.
This panel discussion, which brought together food writer and publisher, Archana Pidathala, journalist Sharanya Deepak, author Krish Ashok, chef and food entrepreneur Thomas Zacharias,, Elizabeth Yorke (Chef and Food Researcher), went on to become one the best-attended panels at the festival. “It was a huge success,” points out Ms. Sagar, who believes that the relationship people had with food has changed considerably since COVID, with people being more invested in what they eat.
The success of that panel discussion, in turn, had them choosing food as a potential theme for the next library exhibition, a quarterly occurrence at IIHS, something that was started by the library in 2013 to “unpack topics, and themes which could be relevant,” as Preedip Balaji, a senior consultant at the IIHS library, points out. Bringing together all these books in a single exhibition, rather than having them lying around the library, could help identify the common thread running through them all. “It also helps us identify resources we don’t have and add them (to the library), says Mr. Balaji, adding that they often work closely with subject-matter experts for this.
The team had already identified food writers for City Scripts, and had an available list, says Ms. Debroy. “We looked at the existing collection in the library to identify books we could highlight, which were talking about food,” she says, adding that they also ended up procuring books that they didn’t already have. “Elizabeth (Yorke) also helped,” recalls Ms. Debroy, adding that she had given them a list of books as well. “We thought it would be a fun topic for people to engage with, expanding the idea of food writing beyond cookbooks and recipe books.”
Relationship people had with food has changed considerably since COVID, with people being more invested in what they eat.
Beyond Books
Mr. Balaji flips open a copy of Machher Jhol, a children’s book written by Richa Jha and edited by Sumanta Dey, which tells the story of a little boy, Gopu, on a quest to get fish curry for his sick father, and says, “One category we often tend not to look at are children’s books,” he says, pointing out that they have specifically included these in this exhibition. “It could be about introducing seasonal foods and local cuisine to children, educating them about larger sustainable development goals.”
These conversations also connect to IIHS’ larger vision of learning to grow and cook for sustainable cities, in times of acute climate crises predicted for the near future. “One of the things our urban fellows do is harvesting and cooking,” points out Ms. Sagar, adding that our understanding of agriculture is still limited to what we know from the Anthropocene.
Exhibitions such as this one, which offer a more holistic understanding of food, inevitably broaden a consumer’s understanding of the entire ecosystem, hopefully also translating into better consumption patterns and choices. “It is very important that we shift from a very consumerist pattern of just picking up a bag of produce from the market to understanding the growing aspect of it,” believes Ms. Sagar.
