Curry

Title: Curry - A Tale of Cooks and Conquerors

Author: Lizzie Collingham

Publisher: Vintage Books, 2006 (First published 2005)

ISBN: 9780099437864

Pages: 318

When I was in college, there was an old witticism which ran something like this: “Heaven is when you have a German car, American salary, Chinese food and Indian wife. Hell is when the car is Chinese, food German, wife American and salary Indian”. However, with the 2015 pollution scandal concerning the German Volkswagen brand and twenty years with an Indian wife, I am not so sure of its authenticity anymore! But Indian food, especially its curry, deserves a better deal as attested by its increased acceptance in various parts of the world. As can be expected, the food in the Indian subcontinent is very much varied in style and substance with the ubiquitous rice in Tamil country, sickly sweetness of Gujarat, mustard oil in Bengal and the unbearable hotness of the Telugu cuisine. The subcontinent was partitioned into three countries in the last century – India, Pakistan and Bangladesh – but the cuisine unites them still. Indian curry was popularized in other countries with the growth of imperialism. Colonial British administrators who had retired to a peaceful life in the home country and the Indians studying or working in England craved for Indian food. This steady demand spawned a string of affordable restaurants, from which the fad spread to other parts of the British Empire. Another wave of Indian migration occurred after the Second World War and the oil boom of the 1980s. The curry is hence finding more and more adoring patrons in all the places it had visited. This book presents the story of how it was transformed into something like a home-grown dish for the British and the immense changes which took place in the ingredients and preparation of it. Lizzie Collingham is a historian interested in linking the minutiae of daily life to the broad sweep of historical processes. She has also written another book which examines the Second World War from the perspective of food as a weapon of war.

The traditional Hindu society was very particular with what you eat, how you eat, whom you eat with and who cooked it. The author presents a clear observation on the taboos associated with this simple act of eating. The social status of the cook was especially important for kaccha foods which are not properly cooked and just prepared with water. Water softens the food and opens it up for (ritual) contamination. The pakka foods were prepared in ghee or oil, a product of the sacred cow. This saving grace allows high-caste people to sometimes eat them even if they are prepared by lower castes. Such extensive rules were made irrelevant and impractical with the growth of railways. During long journeys, the travellers prudently chose to do away with caste rules rather than starving. Food taboo was another concern. Muslims won't eat pork and caste Hindus won’t eat beef. As far as other non-vegetarian food is concerned, attitudes were malleable. Kashmiri Brahmins would eat mutton while Bengali Brahmins would happily gulp down fish. Generally, the author observes that caste rules and regulations on food were far more flexible than they looked on paper. Some Ayurvedic textbooks recommend a beef-rich diet to people with active occupations. The Mahabharata mentions Brahmins enjoying good beef dinners (p.23) while it also includes a passage where a cow complains about the wanton carnage committed on her relatives. Outlook towards the consumption of beef began to alter as the country became increasingly agrarian and Indians relied more heavily on cows as draught animals and to produce milk. A ban on cow slaughter was then not long in coming.

A great infusion of external tastes to Indian taste buds came about during the Mughal period. Mughal cuisine was a synthesis of Indian, Persian and Central Asian foods and recipes. Humayun was exiled to Persia for a few years under the reign of Sher Shah Suri. He brought with him Persian cooks when he regained the throne. In Akbar's time, the delicately flavoured Persian pilau met the pungent and spicy rice dishes of India to create the classic Mughlai dish, the Biryani.

India came under the influence of Europeans from the sixteenth century onwards, who introduced many varieties of American eatables like pineapple, chilli, tomato, potato and maize which found quick acceptance in Indian cuisine. The British food didn't enthuse Indians, but their eclectic approach to Indian cookery created a repertoire of dishes which brought together in one kitchen influences ranging from all over the subcontinent. That is, North Indian food came to the south through British hands. Mughlai cuisine was employed only by the Muslims, but when the British co-opted it into their dining tables, it found wide reception among Indians. However, British dining habits underwent a subtle change in the latter half of nineteenth century. With the introduction of steamships and the opening of the Suez Canal, more British women came to India and the British began to get more insulated from Indians. Officials educated in public schools were promoted as colonial rulers who wanted to demonstrate the superiority of the British race. Around this time, they became aware of the White man’s burden and the priority of the rulers shifted to bring the benefits of civilization to the ‘backward and impoverished people’ of India. As a consequence, curry and rice were demoted from evening dinners but they continued in the menu during camping in the countryside and long voyages.

The final part of the book tells the story of how Indian food reached and conquered British minds in their homeland. Today, there are 8000 Indian restaurants in Britain and the majority of them are run by Bangladeshis. More than any other ethnic food, the British have made curry an integral part of British culture. They spend at least GBP 2 billion in Indian restaurants every year. However, Collingham makes a friendly warning that consumption of large quantities of curry has not necessarily made the British any less racist.

Reading the accounts of enthusiasts writing their experiences in the past, we can't help notice the poor quality of available food even to the rich and influential. One Englishwoman, new to India, was horrified to discover that her breakfast was full of little cooked worms. After sometime in India, she gave up trying to eradicate worms from flour and came to the conclusion that ‘it is better to come to reasonable terms with nature in the East’. We have come a long way from the point when even the society’s elite had to be content with contaminated food.

The book exhibits surprising historical propriety for a volume of its kind. It also lists a mindboggling collection of very old books pertaining to the Raj period in its bibliography. The author has taken great pains to collect recipes of major Indian dishes and to mix it dexterously with the text and also at the end of each chapter.

The book is recommended

Rating: 3 Star