Food Memoir

Vineet Erasala

Neither of my parents were born wealthy, but they never went to bed hungry. Something coveted in their upbringings was food. When asked about her childhood, my mother will not fail to tell you about the richness of the food she ate, despite living in a crowded one room flat in Mumbai. Her mother was the one expected to stay at home and cook while her father worked, and every meal was communal to her family.  She recalls with relish Creamy Shrimp and Egg Curries, hot poori, and indian style salad on her birthdays.  My father, meanwhile, remembers his young adulthood escaping his strictly religious and vegetarian mother, meat being taboo (Meaning of Food). My grandmother defends to this day that eating meat is immoral and sacrilegious. My father defied her in his own way by trying meat with his friends and experimenting with foreign cuisine. After moving to America together, the foreign frigid winters alienated my parents. They cooked Bisibelabath several times a week, finding comfort in its warmth. Nothing I have ever observed immerses my parents in nostalgia quite like a family recipe cooked just right. This is, in their eyes, soul food. As they eat, a story is portrayed on their faces of youth and remembrance of a different time and a different land.

Bisibelabath is rich, hot, and simple. prerequisites to any soul food. It’s a pressure-cooker made, one-pot dish made of tomatoes, onion, potato, sambar powder, curry leaves, vegetable oil, and of course, rice. For my parents, agreeing with Mervyn Claxton, “do not feel satisfied if their principal meal does not involve a product of the traditional staple food” that is rice (Claxton 2). The rule of thumb is to cook twice in the pressure cooker. The memories of my childhood at home are punctuated by the intense hisses emanated from the tiny spout of those stainless steel monstrosities, indicating an imminent mealtime.

Life for me is habitually centered around mealtime. Claudia Happel maintains that in Indian culture “food is a social practice. Eating is ... a social activity” (Happel 1). As I’ve grown, I  regrettably spend increasingly less time with my family. However, every night, dinner at my household requires everyone’s presence, with limited exceptions. Here I catch up on everything going on with my family. Politely disagreeing about politics with my father, catching up on my sister’s latest middle school drama, talking about my mother’s incompetent co-workers. In the end, Bisibelabath always soothes any family tension. the warmth and flavor it provides never fail to mimic the richness of the conversation and mood that it catalyzes. Each of us are creatures of one unique background. Food is our way of connecting with people, experimenting with our personalities, and most of all staying grounded in our identity.

Works Cited

Bates, Will. 28 Hotel Rooms: Music from the Motion Picture. Fall on Your Sword. Rec. 2011. Milan Records, 2012. MP3.

Claxton, Mervyn. Culture, Food, and Identity. Rep. Vol. 6. N.p.: Normangirvan.info, n.d. Print. Ser. on Culture and Development.

"Food, Nation and Cultural Identity." Food, Nation and Cultural Identity. British Library Board, 2013. Web. 09 Dec. 2013.

Happel, Claudia A. "You Are What You Eat: Food as Expression of Social Identity and Intergroup Relations in the Colonial Andes." Diss. The Ohio State University, 2012. Abstract.Cincinnati Romance Review 33 (2012): 175-93. Print.

3 Impactful Quotes

from Mervyn Claxton’s Culture, Food, and Identity (http://www.normangirvan.info/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/culturefood-and-identity-6.pdf)

“Eating is never a purely biological activity since the consumption of food, whether it is simply or elaborately prepared, is always imbued with meaning, which is understood and communicated in various symbolic ways” (Claxton 1).

“Most civilizations have been built on the cultivation of one staple food crop, which is almost invariably endowed with religious significance, the origin of which is usually shrouded in myth. In most cultures also, people often do not feel satisfied if their principal meal does not involve a product of the traditional staple food” (Claxton 2)

“The symbolic meaning of food sometimes has little to do with the food itself, as in the use of rice to shower newly-weds in certain cultures, and eating socially has less to do with nutrition than with communication and relationships. Food has also played an important part in religion, helping to define the separateness of one creed from another by means of dietary taboos” (Claxton 1)

From Claudia Happel’s You are what you eat: Food as expression of social identity and intergroup relations in the colonial Andes (http://www.cromrev.com/volumes/vol33/10-vol33-Cornejo.pdf)

“Access to food, feasting, as well as commensal politics are indicators of social status. Culinary skills and choices often reflect social and personal identity” (Happel 1)

“practices and shared values regarding food – the ingredients considered edible, the method of preparation, and the conditions of food consumption and feasting – assist in the creation of a relatively homogenous community” (Happel 1-2).

“Not surprisingly, there are many different manifestations of this most basic food across the vast American continent, as Acosta himself points out. Yet, as he uses a Spanish term to refer to a basic staple food that has little in common with European bread, his discourse obliviates all the different indigenous names used for staple foods” (Happel 4).