Jayanta Sengupta

Whether it was the surfacing of a large number of texts in regional languages in the late 19th century, of which cookbooks were a major part, or deconstructing the confluence of cultures in a metropolis like Mumbai through the prism of food history, the culinary arts, Sengupta tells us, has played an immense role in shaping our society.

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He says, for example, the fact that Mumbai's food is such a grand amalgamation of Portuguese, British, Parsi, Gujarati, Maharashtrian, East Indian, and so many other culinary influences, has in large part to do with how the city was the gateway of India. "As a city, it was the stepping stone for most explorers," the historian argues. This approach can be applied not only to understand the larger culinary legacy of a city like Mumbai, but also to explain the smaller facets of its food scene. "Look at the way the dabbawallah system has managed to mediate the binary between the home and outside by providing home-cooked food at the workplace," he says, adding that much of this obsession with ghar ka khaana is pre-empted by a patriarchal rhetoric around food, which is associated with emotions like love and affection. The idea, as such, was to encourage a dialogue that looks at Mumbai's foodscape in a manner that helps identify the cultural and social indices that have impacted it.

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