![Sample our Area Studies journals, sign in here to start your access, latest two full volumes FREE to you for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5922/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Area-Studies.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The word ‘border’ usually refers to the dividing line between two distinct territories. Geo-political borders not only protect the sovereignty of the nation but also preserve the cultural and the religious identities of the people inhabiting the nation. ‘Food,’ an important signifier of cultural identity, is an effective tool for drawing lines between the South Asian ethnic and sub-ethnic groups. Women play a crucial role in sustaining such borderlines. For them, kitchen is the fortress, where traditional food items are prepared and the secrets of cooking are handed down the generations through daughters and daughters-in-law. The performative roles associated with the production of food are strictly reserved for women. In the Indian subcontinent, food can be studied as a discursive domain of feminine rituals observed in social and religious ceremonies. In this article, I have analysed this connection between food and femininity by examining the gendered kitchen rituals. I have also examined the kitchen space as the cultural borderline that protects and preserves the traditions of a community and nation. I have explored the culinary practices as a site of patriarchal surveillance and feminine resistance in the literary narratives of Bulbul Sharma, Monica Ali and Tahira Naqvi.
Acknowledgement
I acknowledge the suggestions offered by the anonymous reviewers of this article.
Correction Statement
This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
Notes
1. Mannur, Culinary Fictions, 44.
2. Refers to Salman Rushdie’s concept as it has been explained in his essay “Imaginary Homelands.”
3. Raman, “Me in Place,”166.
4. Mankekar, “‘India Shopping’,”86.
5. Ibid.,84.
6. Zubaida, “The Idea of Indian food,” 205.
7. Banerji, Eating India, 5. Emphasis original.
8. Ibid., 5.
9. Ibid., 8.
10. Ibid., 14.
11. Ibid., 14.
12. Vlitos, Eating and Identity, 1.
13. Ibid., 40.
14. Roy, “Reading Communities and the Culinary Communities,” 480.
15. Lahiri, The Namesake, 7.
16. Ibid., 7.
17. Mignolo and Tlotstanova, “Theorizing from the Borders,” 206.
18. Anzaldua, Borderlands, 16.
19. Panjabi and Chakravarti, “Introduction,” xviii.
20. Chatterjee, “The Nationalist Resolution of the Women’s Question,” 313.
21. Ibid., 313.
22. Ibid., 320. Italics original.
23. Menon, Seeing Like a Feminist, 35.
24. Ibid., 35.
25. Ibid..
26. Bengali word for maternal grandmother.
27. Sharma, “Saying it with Cauliflowers,” iv (my italics).
28. Mukherjee, “Deepa Mehta’s Film Water,” 219. Deepa Mehta is an Indo-Canadian filmmaker. Water (2005) is the third film in Deepa Mehta’s elements trilogy, the other two of which are Fire (1996) and Earth (1998). It represents the plight of the Hindu widows in Banaras.
29. Ibid., 219.
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Anzaldua, Borderlands, 4.
33. Sharma, “Saying it with Cauliflowers,” v. “Sometimes my mother is allowed into the kitchen but only after she has bathed, washed her hair and changed into fresh clothes.”
34. Ibid., iv.
35. Ibid., v.
36. See note 34 above.
37. Ibid., iv. “Onions, garlic, meat, glass dishes and servants have never entered the room …”.
38. See note 35 above.
39. Ibid., v. Italics original.
40. Sharma, “The Anger of Aubergines,” 57.
41. Ibid., 57.
42. Ibid., 54.
43. Ibid., 54.
44. Ibid., 55.
45. Ibid., 56.
46. Ibid., 57.
47. Ibid., 57.
48. Ibid., 57.
49. Ibid., 57.
50. Ibid., 56.
51. Ibid., 57.
52. Ibid., 58.
53. Ibid., 59.
54. Ali, Brick Lane, 15.
55. Ibid., 78. Nazneen’s mother had said to her, “If God wanted us to ask questions, he would have made us men.”
56. Ibid., 15.
57. Ibid., 15.
58. Ibid., 117.
59. Ibid., 111. “They ate dinner on trays balanced on their laps. An unidentified meat in tepid gravy, with boiled potatoes. It was like eating cardboard soaked in water.”
60. Ibid., 112. “Nazneen wondered what it was that kept bringing Dr. Azad to see Chanu. They were an ill-matched pair. Perhaps he came for the food.”
61. Ibid., 27. Chanu tells Dr. Azad, “These people here didn’t know the difference between me, who stepped off an aeroplane with a degree certificate, and the peasants who jumped off the boat possessing only lice on their heads.”
62. Ibid., 541. Nazneen skates in a sari.
63. Ibid., 524, 526,535.
64. Bhabha, “Preface,” xv.
65. Naqvi, “Thank God for the Jews,” 16.
66. Ibid., 17.
67. Ibid., 17.
68. Ibid., 17.
69. Ibid., 17.
70. Ibid., 18.
71. Ibid., 18.
72. Ibid., 18.
73. Ibid., 18.
74. Ibid., 18.
75. Ibid., 18.
76. Ibid., 19.
77. Cf. Note 60.
78. Naqvi, “Thank God for the Jews,” 16.
79. Ibid., 22.
80. Ibid., 22.
81. Ibid., 22.
82. Ibid., 22.
83. Ibid., 23.
84. Ibid., 23.
85. Ibid., 23.
86. Ibid., 24.
87. Ibid., 24.
88. Ibid., 25.
89. Ibid., 25.
90. Ibid., 26.
91. Ibid., 20, 21, 22. Clippings from TV news are mentioned.
92. Mannur, Culinary Fictions, 29.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Shyamasri Maji
Shyamasri Maji is an Assistant Professor in English at Durgapur Women’s College, West Bengal, India. She completed her MA, M.Phil and PhD in English from the University of Burdwan (India). The title of her doctoral thesis is ‘Anxiety of Representation in Select Anglo-Indian Writers.’ Areas of her research interest include Diasporic Studies, Postcolonial literature and the Anglo-Indian community. Her articles have been published in both national and international journals such as Antipodes, Indialogs, Doc On-Line and International Journal of Anglo-Indian Studies. Her book reviews have been published in Asiatic: IIUM Journal of English Language and Literature. She is the recipient of Independent Research Fellowship 2018-19 at Satyajit Ray Film and Television Institute, Kolkata.