Matter Of Taste

by Nilanjana Roy (Editor)

A delectable collection of writing on food and its place in our lives that brings together some of the most significant Indian voices over the last century From lavish meals, modern diets and cooking lessons that serve as a rite of passage to fake fasts and real ones, fish, feni, and fiery meals that smack of revenge, this book has something to satisfy every palate. Gandhi s guilt-ridden account of his failed flirtation with eating meat starkly complements Ruchir Joshi s toast to the senses as he describes his characters discovering a truly alternative use for some perfectly innocent shrikhand. In unique gastronomic takes on history, Salman Rushdie, Amitav Ghosh and Saadat Hasan Manto ensure that we will never look at chutney, a Tibetan momo or jelly in quite the same way again. Food becomes the less appetizing religious line of control for Abdul Bismillah s guest when a simple meal illustrates the rather thin divide between guest and host, while subtler shades of deprivation mark Anjana Appachana s Anu as she keeps a fast that reeks of prejudice. And in faraway lands, across the seven seas , the search for fresh fish accentuates the loneliness of a life without familiar moorings for Jhumpa Lahiri s Mrs Sen even as Anita Desai s Arun learns from his American hosts the importance of keeping the freezer full . As much about food as it is about good writing, A Matter of Taste serves up a veritable feast for the senses and food for thought to sample or devour, as one pleases.

Genres: Food, Nonfiction, Food Writing, India

280 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Nilanjana Roy is the author of The Wildings, published by Aleph Book Company in 2012. This is her first novel and stars a clan of cats in Nizamuddin. A collection of literary journalism, How To Read In Indian, will be published by HarperCollins in 2013.

Her column on the reading life for the Business Standard has run for over 15 years; she has also written columns for the International Herald Tribune and the Kolkata Telegraph on gender issues in India. Over a decade-and-a-half in media and publishing, Nilanjana has been chief editor at Westland/ Tranquebar, edited and contributed to the Outlook Books page, Biblio and several other literary magazines/ periodicals, served on the jury for the Crossword Prize and the DSC Prize among others, and started India’s first literary blog–Kitabkhana, which ran for several years under the pseudonym of Hurree Babu. She has worked extensively on free speech and censorship issues in India.

Her fiction and journalism have appeared in several journals and anthologies, including Caravan, Civil Lines 6, the New York Times’ India blog, The Hindu and Biblio. Some of her stories for children have been published in Scholastic’s Spooky Stories, Science Fiction Stories and BeWitched. She is a champion eater, which much to her surprise, qualified her to be the editor of a 2005 anthology, A Matter of Taste: The Penguin Book of Indian Food Writing. Nilanjana lives in Delhi with two cats and her husband. She can be found at http://nilanjanaroy.com, or @twitter.com/nilanjanaroy, (and would very much like to be found @Belize, @Bhutan or @Barcelona one of these days, not that she’s hinting or anything).

Reviews

[Punit · Rating 2 out of 5]

Anecdotes, articles, recipes, excerpts, history, stories, and much more all revolving around food. The anthology is a brilliant idea with a tad poor execution. And hint hint! The book is more on Indian writing(or rather Indian writers) than on Indian food(should have been obvious with the title, innit?)

Though the compilation is grouped into relatable sections, I found them to be more discrete than seamlessly placed. Some literary pieces left me craving for more, while some left a sour taste in my mouth; pun intended. And unlike the previous anthologies I reviewed, I am not going to take an average on this.


Skip it if you have read some of the notable works of some known writers, as the selection is just an excerpt of the major work:
Rude food by Vir Sanghvi,
My experiments with truth by M K Gandhi,
Guide by R K Narayan,
A house for Mr Biswas by V S Naipaul,
Mistress of spices by Chitra Banerji Divakaruni,
Such a long journey by Rohinton Mistry,
Maximum city: Bombay by Suketu Mehta,
The Imam and the Indian by Amitav Ghosh,
Untouchable by Mulk Raj Anand,
Everybody loves a good drought by P Sainath

and many others.

[Evie · Rating 3 out of 5]

As all collections, there's some that are much better than others. A few of these are absolutely brilliant and at least one I could not finish. I was disappointed that so many are written outside of India or about western foods, but I had to realize that it is Indian writers not Indian food. I felt that the final essay on gastric bypass/appetite left a bad taste in my mouth (pun intended).

[Budhaditya Mazumdar · Rating 5 out of 5]

Almost out of print. Got it in India through Amazon. An excellent book full of interesting vignettes on various influences of food on Indian culture. You can't go wrong with a Jamini Roy painting adorning the cover!

[Vampire Who Baked · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lovely little book, with pieces from the entire constellation of Indian writers, from expats like Jhumpa Lahiri, V.S.Naipaul, Anita Desai, Amitav Ghosh and Salman Rushdie, to classical legends like R.K. Narayan, Mahasweta Devi and Bibhuti Bhushan Bandopadhyay, to non-fiction from Atul Gawande and P. Sainath, beloved hyperlocal wordsmiths like Rohinton Mistry, Irwin Allan Sealy and Suketu Mehta, celebrities like Vir Sanghvi, and even a piece by M.K. Gandhi (on his tryst with meat-eating, taken from his autobiography). While the pieces themselves are inconsistent in quality, this book is nevertheless one of the best examples of the anthology format, spanning a wide variety of subjects, genres, forms, topics, backgrounds, and so on, and organising the pieces into sections based on broad overarching themes-- among others, there are personal stories, historical pieces, expat writing, pieces on class differences, and even a section on the lack of food, both externally induced like famines, as well as self-imposed, as in diets.

Delightful little gems stand shoulder to shoulder with insightful pieces and fiery diatribes with social commentary, and even shrikhand-erotica-- and none of the pieces overstay their welcome. Very highly recommended.

[Rishabh Maheshwari · Rating 1 out of 5]

Stories start from nowhere, end nowhere, there is no context to them at all, some of them are not even about food.
A very weak book.

[Akash Salim · Rating 4 out of 5]

Insightful collection of stories about the wonders of food, how our memories are stamped with the smell, taste, feel and colour of food, how food habits divide and unite us and the politics of consumption and deprivation.