Taste your food onscreen

Ask not what you can do for your country. Ask what’s for lunch” joked Orson Welles. While globalisation might have ensured that our palate has opened to tastes from round the globe, we still get back home to make the most of each homemade meal. And each such meal gives not just a glimpse into our kitchens, but into the very fabric of our beings. Or so says filmmaker Vani Subramanian, whose film Stir.Fry. Simmer. delves into the story of the kitchen.
The hour-long film portrays the kitchen as a place that can teach us about who we are and how every food practice is about much more than the ingredients that go into it. She explains, “Our notions of food are closely linked to our sense of identity. Our food defines who we are and more importantly who we are not.”
The manner in which food associations can have socio-political repercussions comes across in a sequence in the film, where the Naga elders send a letter to the Government of India. The articulation of their differences from Indian ethnicity lays great emphasis on food.
“The Nagas feel alienated from the Indian identity; they say the Hindus don’t include them as they eat beef, while the Muslims too don’t, because they eat pork,” says Subramaniam. That’s how a simple food habit can have even major political connotations. In fact, the film goes on show how in many Delhi localities, the Nagas don’t find houses to live in because of what they eat.
Subramanian’s film will be screened at the city campus of Indian Institute for Human Settlements (IIHS). A women’s rights activist and documentary filmmaker, this — Subramanian’s latest work — also looks at how food constructs identity. Take the case of the band Avial, which is also the name of a dish from Kerala, and its impact on the surnames of the Musaharas (a community of rat hunters in Bihar).
“While the band’s assertion of its Malayali identity through the word Avial is working to its benefit, the Musahars are dropping the Musahar surname, as it has a negative connotation of being a rat-eating community,” explains Subramanian.
“So these are two incidents of exerting and dropping an ethnic identity owing to the social connotations it can have.” For more on what’s cooking and how it defines who you are, catch this film.
Stir.Fry.Simmer, 6 pm, March 21, IIHS Bangalore, Sadashivnagar, 67606666