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Turmeric Nation: A Passage Through India’s Tastes
What exactly is ‘Indian’ food? Can it be classified by region, or religion, orritual? What are the culinary commonalities across the Indian subcontinent?Do we Indians have a sense of collective self when it comes to cuisine? Or isthe pluralism in our food habits and choices the only identity we have everneeded?Turmeric Nation is an ambitious and insightful project which answers thesequestions, and then quite a few more. Through a series of fascinating essays—delving into geography, history, myth, sociology, film, literature and personalexperience—Shylashri Shankar traces the myriad patterns that have formedIndian food cultures, taste preferences and cooking traditions. From Dalit‘haldiya dal’ to the last meal of the Buddha; from aphrodisiacs listed in theKama Sutra to sacred foods offered to gods and prophets; from the use of foodas a means of state control in contemporary India to the role of lemonade instoking rebellion in 19th-century Bengal; from the connection between deathand feasting and between fasting and pleasure, this book offers a layered andrevealing portrait of India, as a society and a nation, through its enduringrelationship with food.
292 pages, Kindle Edition
Published August 4, 2020
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
June 4, 2023
More 4.5. Informative without being pedantic. I really liked how it was written even if some theory was harder to unpack. A very engaging read.
February 10, 2022
Quite an interesting book. Three stars seems harsh; I would give it 3.5 if it were possible.
It digs deep into the why's and how's of Indian cuisines, and as someone who likes their food, there were many TIL moments. That said, I did feel it tried to answer a few too many questions at once. It is not a critique of the book necessarily, just a personal observation. I had to go back a few pages to recollect context etc.
It digs deep into the why's and how's of Indian cuisines, and as someone who likes their food, there were many TIL moments. That said, I did feel it tried to answer a few too many questions at once. It is not a critique of the book necessarily, just a personal observation. I had to go back a few pages to recollect context etc.
November 22, 2020
Book: Turmeric Nation: A Passage Through India’s Tastes
Author: Shylashri Shankar
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Price: Rs. 499
There is a popular saying in India, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. We love food, and jokingly so, some of us ‘live to eat’. To validate this point, author Shylashri Shankar writes in the book, “Evelyn Waugh said that his favorite bedtime reading was Elizabeth David’s cookbooks. Mine used to be Emily Post’s Etiquette.”
Soothing to the eye, the cover of this book provides a deep insight into the voyage of food in India. The question of defining ‘Indian food’ is not as simple as it may sound, what is Indian in the food we eat is an age-old question for us. Is it even possible to categorize Indian food in shorter categories like South Indian, North Indian, Veg/Non-Veg, ‘Mughalai’? Does food have a religion? This book is a collection of essays by Shylashri Shankar that tries to answer these big questions. As it is in itself an ambitious project, the narrative suffers its own challenges, the wideness of the topic. The book starts with explaining the Aryan Question in brief and talks about what Novel Harari says to be History’s biggest fraud, the advent of Agriculture. Defining the food and spice profile or the nation in a compact book is rather a daunting task, various cookbooks have been written, this book tries to be an exception. There is always a question that how much of what we eat is ‘truly Indian’ and how we have come a long in culinary history; from what our ancestors used to eat to today’s veganism and the era of fast or processed foods.
Shylashri tries to answer a rather important question of identity being associated with food, which increasingly so is becoming a point to debate. Keeping aside the one challenge that the narration suffers that is the depth of the question that it seeks to answer, Overall, this book provides an intriguing, compelling narrative of the making of culture, habits, taboos, identity around food in India through the ages.
Author: Shylashri Shankar
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Price: Rs. 499
There is a popular saying in India, the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. We love food, and jokingly so, some of us ‘live to eat’. To validate this point, author Shylashri Shankar writes in the book, “Evelyn Waugh said that his favorite bedtime reading was Elizabeth David’s cookbooks. Mine used to be Emily Post’s Etiquette.”
Soothing to the eye, the cover of this book provides a deep insight into the voyage of food in India. The question of defining ‘Indian food’ is not as simple as it may sound, what is Indian in the food we eat is an age-old question for us. Is it even possible to categorize Indian food in shorter categories like South Indian, North Indian, Veg/Non-Veg, ‘Mughalai’? Does food have a religion? This book is a collection of essays by Shylashri Shankar that tries to answer these big questions. As it is in itself an ambitious project, the narrative suffers its own challenges, the wideness of the topic. The book starts with explaining the Aryan Question in brief and talks about what Novel Harari says to be History’s biggest fraud, the advent of Agriculture. Defining the food and spice profile or the nation in a compact book is rather a daunting task, various cookbooks have been written, this book tries to be an exception. There is always a question that how much of what we eat is ‘truly Indian’ and how we have come a long in culinary history; from what our ancestors used to eat to today’s veganism and the era of fast or processed foods.
Shylashri tries to answer a rather important question of identity being associated with food, which increasingly so is becoming a point to debate. Keeping aside the one challenge that the narration suffers that is the depth of the question that it seeks to answer, Overall, this book provides an intriguing, compelling narrative of the making of culture, habits, taboos, identity around food in India through the ages.
February 9, 2023
I was expecting to simply read about the origin stories of some Indian regional cuisines.
The book offered insights into topics I wouldn't even imagine ... like the kind of food we forced backward castes in India to eat, or the last supposed meal of Buddha, or how caste played a role in making coffee a favored drink in South India, so on ....
Truly appreciate the effort the author put into compiling this book.
This is such a gem!
PS: When I go through other reviews, I agree with what some find as too many topics for a book. But that can be overlooked in my opinion .. since one wouldn't find many of those topics that easily :)
The book offered insights into topics I wouldn't even imagine ... like the kind of food we forced backward castes in India to eat, or the last supposed meal of Buddha, or how caste played a role in making coffee a favored drink in South India, so on ....
Truly appreciate the effort the author put into compiling this book.
This is such a gem!
PS: When I go through other reviews, I agree with what some find as too many topics for a book. But that can be overlooked in my opinion .. since one wouldn't find many of those topics that easily :)
March 21, 2021
"Tumeric Nation" is a rather disjoint collection of essays on food and all the aspects of life it touches - including religion, relationships, nationality, genetic makeup, etc. The essays are uneven in their quality - some are excellent, some are quite insipid. However, this collection doesn't come together as a book. (To be fair, the author does declare in the introduction that the essays could be read in any order).
Didn't quite work for me. Perhaps I was expecting a more structured journey of Indian culinary history through space and time as the subtitle promised.
Didn't quite work for me. Perhaps I was expecting a more structured journey of Indian culinary history through space and time as the subtitle promised.
December 11, 2020
Had purchased this book with a lot of curiosity and hopes. I read and sat through each page thinking maybe now the author would come to the point. That never happened, atleast for me.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews