A Moveable Feast http://www.openthemagazine.com/taxonomy/term/25846/feed en The Disputed Ancestry of Taste http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/a-moveable-feast/the-disputed-ancestry-of-taste <p>VEG OR NON- veg,” asks the stewardess on Air India, and you know you have arrived in India. It is only here that this phrase is used. You also know that ‘veg’ does not include fish or eggs, as it does on European airlines that use the term ‘Hindu vegetarian’ to refer to the Indian ‘veg’ category.</p> <p>However, most Indians are not vegetarians; in fact, only 31 per cent are indeed vegetarians, according to <em>The Hindu-CNN-IBN</em> Food Habits of a Nation Survey in 2006. The figure is 21 per cent for families (with all vegetarian members). Another 9 per cent of the population is ‘eggetarian’, or vegetarians who eat eggs. Women are more likely to be vegetarian than men and so are those above the age of 55. But there is no broad correspondence between age and vegetarianism. Among the young, the figure is only slightly below the national average. The lowest proportion of vegetarian families is in coastal states such as Kerala (2 per cent), Tamil Nadu (8 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (4 per cent), Odisha (8 per cent) and Bengal (3 per cent). Most land-locked states, especially in the west and north, are places with the highest proportion of vegetarian families: Rajasthan (63 per cent), Haryana (62 per cent), Punjab (48 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (33 per cent), Madhya Pradesh (35 per cent) and Gujarat (45 per cent). Hindus who worship every day are more likely to be vegetarian, but the majority of all Hindus are non-vegetarian.</p> <p>Yet, in public discourse these days, there is a tendency to link vegetarianism with Hinduism, and with non-violence (particularly towards the cow), and with purity. It is not clear to me when and why these three concepts intertwined in Hinduism especially since Vedic age rituals continue even today. Ayurveda, for instance, contradicts present-day Hindu orthodoxy, notably in the prescription of animal flesh for medicinal purposes. In <em>The Jungle and the Aroma of Meats: An Ecological theme in Hindu Medicine</em>, Francis Zimmermann points out that the Atharva Veda permits the eating of meat including cattle products in sacrificial contexts, in cases of medical emergency, and as part of a model of proper life for the Kshatriya. In the Ayurvedic medicinal text, Charaka Samhita, women after giving birth are advised to consume a paste of ‘a portion of the right ear of the untamed and alive bull... cut and smashed in a stone mortar’. At the same time, Ayurveda also reveres the cow and says it should be treated with all respect. An explanation for this ambiguity on the cow is that reverence for that animal was part of an earlier tradition that Ayurveda developed but did not leave behind. The texts of classical Ayurveda were written during a time of political fragmentation when the Mauryan Empire had fallen, and the Gupta Empire was beginning to rise, during a time of religious and cultural flux.</p> <p>Katherine Ulrich’s work on the Buddhist, Jain and Hindu modes of dealing with food, and their food fights with each other, offers us an interesting way of approaching the ambiguity around meat in Hinduism. The three religions, she says, rank non-violence differently in the creation of their cuisines. Buddhist rules are driven by a fairly equal emphasis on the importance of alms-giving (especially for the laity), non-attachment (especially for the renouncer/monk), the practice of austerities and the need to avoid violence.</p> <p>Jainism too has similarities with Buddhism— both reject the Vedas and emphasise renunciation as a prerequisite for spiritual advancement. But Jains have different criteria for food rules—non-violence is central, while austerities and alms-giving are important. This is because for Jains, karma is a physical substance that can be ‘dusted off’ from the soul by physical acts of catechism, such as fasting. For Buddhists, on the other hand, the nature of karma makes mental/volitional acts of greater importance than the physical ones of fasting or vegetarianism.</p> <p>In contrast, for Shaivite Hindus, vegetarianism and non- vegetarianism are secondary to devotion to God. A bedtime story I remember listening to as a child was about Kannapan— a hunter who makes an offering of water (carried in his mouth) to a Shiva lingam whose eyes begin bleeding. Having already sacrificed one eye, Kannapan places his foot on the eye socket to guide him, and gouges out the second eye. The Lord appears and restores Kannapan’s sight.</p> <p>These food fights are evident in Tamil literature from the 10th century. The main group attacked in the verses of Nilakeci, one of five minor epics of Tamil literature dated to the 10th century written by a Jain, are Buddhists who are criticised for permitting their adherents to eat meat as long as they do not personally slaughter it. The poem also chastises Vedic sacrifice on two grounds: that sacrificial killing results in negative karma, and second, that deities do not need such bloody offerings. What is interesting is that Brahmins are associated with Vedic sacrifices, and hence with non-vegetarianism rather than vegetarianism. Even today <em>bali</em> (sacrifice) is offered by Brahmin priests in the form of vegetarian symbols such as pumpkin or lime. What this tells us is how fluid identities are in inhabiting categories such as pure and polluted, veg and non-veg, clean and unclean, and so on.</p> <p>Subsequently, during the freedom struggle, ‘veg versus non-veg’ became a cultural question for Indian nationalists. Jayanta Sengupta in <em>Nation on a Platter</em> points out that those who espoused vegetarianism used a material/spiritual dichotomy where the material was associated with the degenerate West and the spiritual with India. Others like Vivekananda used the same dichotomy to argue for a non- vegetarian diet on grounds that meat eating created a difference between the power to rule others and the abject surrender to a physically more robust people. Here, Vivekananda was echoing the thoughts of philosophers like Nietzsche who thought that meat created power while rice and vegetarianism in general made for effete bodies and souls.</p> <p>What is interesting for our purposes is that the nationalists could not affix a boundary around vegetarianism and connect it to an ‘Indian’ identity. This could be because Hinduism offers multiple ways to achieve liberation, <em>moksha</em>. There is a ritual route to <em>moksha</em>, which demands utmost concern with purity and hence confines itself to vegetarian fare, and a Bhakti way, which does not require such ritual purity. So non-vegetarians too can attain liberation through <em>bhakti</em>.</p> <p>This fluidity around the concept of veg/non-veg is also evident in the diet of the gods. Hindu deities are vegetarian and non-vegetarian, and the debate is whether this distinction symbolises the caste hierarchy. Louis Dumont argues that the opposition between the higher vegetarian and the lower meat- eating deities is a restructuring principle of the Hindu pantheon. CJ Fuller disagrees. He says the opposition is rather between village deities offered only vegetarian food in worship and those offered sacrifices. The same village deity sometimes is segmented into higher and lower forms, with the higher form being vegetarian. Fuller gives the example of Mariyamman who manifests herself in three forms, which are hierarchically ranked and distinguished by acceptance of vegetarian (high), meat (intermediate) and animal sacrifice (low).</p> <p>The substantial divinity of the purely vegetarian Sanskritic deities means that a Shiva or a Vishnu can stand for highness without needing a correlate of lowness in some other deity. It is the village deities worshipped by the low castes, not the Brahmin high castes (who worship the Sanskritic deities), who provide the mould of a hierarchical social order, says Fuller.</p> <p>If vegetarians and non-vegetarians can both attain <em>moksha</em>, then the battle shifts to the health benefits of vegetables versus meat. Vegetarians are more prone to nutritional deficiencies than non-vegetarians, say the latter. An Indian Migration Study of 6,000 participants in Lucknow, Nagpur, Hyderabad and Bangalore found that overall, Indian vegetarian diets have a higher probability of meeting RDA levels of macro- and micro- nutrients with less fat and lower calories than non-vegetarian diets. Vegetarians consumed greater amounts of legumes, vegetables, roots and tubers, dairy and sugar, while non-vegetarians had greater cereals, fruits, spices, salt, fats and oils. Vegetarians also consumed greater amounts of carbohydrates, vitamin C and folate and less fat, protein, vitamin B12 and zinc than non-vegetarians. A study by Saxena and other of a Punjabi Sikh community showed a high prevalence of type II diabetes and cardiovascular disease despite their low obesity rates, vegetarianism, and non-smoking habits. It is not clear that health-wise, a non-vegetarian diet is superior to a vegetarian one, or vice versa.</p> <p>I wonder, however, if our body’s intake and capacity to absorb nutrients is determined less by a veg versus non-veg divide, and more by what our ancestors ate. In other words, more inbreeding (for example, if one is a product of an arranged marriage within a small sub-caste) could produce a genetically insular body composition that is able to process certain types of food but not others.</p> <p>Food for thought!</p> <img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/Taste.jpg?itok=ZHuB2idn" /><div>BY: Shylashri Shankar</div><div>Node Id: 22568</div> Wed, 22 Feb 2017 15:38:57 +0000 vijayopen 22568 at http://www.openthemagazine.com In the Garden of Earthly Delights http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/a-moveable-feast/in-the-garden-of-earthly-delights <p>LUCIANO GIUBBILEI, a garden designer who had won his second gold medal at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show, suddenly found that he no longer felt challenged. In <em>The Art of Making Gardens</em>, he writes: ‘I was proud of the designs… but I felt that these gardens lacked authenticity… In the gardens I dreamed of making, nothing I could envisage seemed quite right, and I didn’t know which path to take.’ That’s when he met Sir Paul Smith who asked him: what did he want people to remember from his garden designs? In other words, what was the mark-making thing or things— those that we experience in a visceral way—in the designs? For mark-making to occur, ‘the experience does not necessarily require a single moment of high drama. If the atmosphere of a place is perfect, for example, an awareness of that seeps into our consciousness and leaves a permanent imprint there’. To rejuvenate the potential for mark-making in himself, Luciano decided to spend some time at Great Dixter, the 2.5 hectare garden in East Sussex designed in the early 20th century by Edwin Lutyens, and the home of the late Christopher Lloyd (the gardener of gardeners). He did this to reflect, to get his hands in the soil, to experience the passing of the seasons and the feeling of being in a working garden. In going to Great Dixter a few days a month, and tending to a border, and thinking of the way in which flowering and foliage plants mingled and connected with the passage of time and seasons, he began to find answers and more questions. How can one make something that has impact but feels humble? That has quality but not status? Which are the materials? Which are the plants? How can one make the garden feel muted, calm, silent, almost black and white? ‘It’s a humble, a more considered approach, one that Great Dixter has been instrumental in instilling in me.’ What Luciano was trying to develop and experience was a sense of mindfulness, of a being here and now, from which creativity flows.</p> <p>In our obsession with the perfect body and/or the mind, we tend to neglect feeding our soul. We all know that self doubt, judgement, fear, anger and hatred are unhealthy foods for the soul. Healthy food, on the other hand, involves evoking gratitude, appreciation, self love and love of others, laughter, joy, and mindfulness.</p> <p>Mindfulness is what I want to cultivate this year. Gardening, I think, helps one do this. Biologist David Haskell treated a one square metre patch in an old Tennessee forest as a mandala, a symbolic picture of the forest. Visiting it almost daily for a year, he observed the flora and fauna’s path through the seasons, which he vividly brings to life in <em>The Forest Unseen</em>.</p> <p>The imagination can only lay hold of that which is absent, said Proust. Gardening triggers and nurtures this type of seeing. There is a rhythm to the tasks of gardening—pluck the yellowing leaves on a rose plant, spray neem oil and soap mix to keep the aphids and other pests at bay, water the plants, give them a daily shower in the summer heat, mulch once a week, and feed them a weekly dosage of NPK fertiliser, and so on. All these activities create the rhythm that cocoons the mind and allows it to dream.</p> <p>The imagination traffics not in the data of our senses but in the memories and dreams and desires (Michael Pollan). For some, distillation, not recreation of nature is the goal. In Sakuteiki, a gardening journal published in the 10th century in Japan, the purist Japanese of the Heian period saw the garden as a work of art that extracted a certain aesthetic essence from nature. Others dream of recreating a garden they have viewed in a magazine or a book. Dreams, by their nature, tend to be grandiose. We create a Versailles or a cottage garden in our imagination when all we have access to is a balcony or a ledge. But I say, dream big, and create it in whatever scale you choose.</p> <p>The reason why a garden is uniquely placed to nurture the soul is because it has, as Pollan says, a quality of doubleness. A garden is simultaneously a real place and a representation. Each time you view your garden, you are also comparing it to the image in your mind’s eye.</p> <blockquote> <p>Luciano Giubbilei decided to spend some time at Great Dixter to reflect, to get his hands in the soil, to experience the passing of the seasons and the feeling of being in working garden</p> </blockquote> <p>IN MY BALCONIES, I wanted a container version of the white garden of Vita Sackville-West’s Sissinghurst. Pots in symmetrical arrangements. Square, round, oval shaped pots with gorgeous Japanese maple trees, peach trees laden with blossoms, white roses spilling out of urns, a weeping standard with the white sea foam rose and underplanted with bluebells and alyssum.</p> <p>When Vita Sackville-West created the white garden in Sissinghurst castle, abundance, flowering bushes, and a monochrome colour scheme were the defining features. Cram cram cram every chink and cranny, she wrote on May 15th, 1955. Lavish garden. Generosity. Always exaggerate rather than stint. Her husband, Henry Nicholson, created the backbone, the structural element without which any garden would collapse into a shapeless mess. Husbands (of the English variety) seem to do this. Another avid gardener, Margery Fish writes in her book that her husband, Walter Fish (the editor of the <em>Daily Mail</em> in the 1930s and 40s) had taught her that one mustn’t rely on flowers to make the garden attractive. A good bone structure must come first, with an intelligent use of evergreen plants so that the garden is always clothed no matter what time of the year. The aim of all gardeners should be a garden that is always presentable. But to achieve this requires a lot of thought, a lot of work, but it can be done, she says. How true.</p> <p>First you have figure out the colours and shapes in your imaginary garden. Then you have to find the plants that match that paradise. For the backbone, you need perennials (hardy shrubs that survive and bloom year after year), not seasonal plants. This is where the weather provides the reality check. I began with bougainvillea since I have always liked their vivid colours and their readiness to bloom in subtropical Delhi’s boiling summers. Trotted off to Sunder nursery, the oldest government plant nursery, to purchase a potted ten-year-old bougainvillea with off-white and deep pink flowers perched like a cloud of butterflies on the ends of gnarled branches. The next flower in my imaginary garden was the hibiscus—it is again another perennial that blooms vividly in the heat and always reminds me of the sea, beaches, and fragrant gardens in Bali (don’t ask me why since I have never been to Bali). I picked up many colours and varieties, but realised that these plants came with other admirers, namely aphids. Black ants liked to harvest these aphids, and ladybirds liked to eat these aphids. I discovered a whole ecosystem around the hibiscus, and on many a summer morning, I found myself picking up ladybirds and depositing them on the aphid infested stems.</p> <p>But my garden lacked the fragrance of my imaginary one. So I looked to roses. Nobody told me that the rose would ensnare me to such an extent that I would research on the net about transforming the ph level of the soil from neutral to acidic. Alexander’s Issie, David Austin’s roses, I would mumble in my dreams, according to my husband, who was forced to cart a carton of rose plants from a rosarian nursery in Bangalore. By now, the weather had improved, and the roses (at least those that had not succumbed to dieback disease) obliged with heavenly scented blooms.</p> <p>But the backbone was missing. Until a friend suggested that I incorporate some natural elements—a stone or a tree. I did both. I rushed off to Sunder nursery and showed the gardeners a photo of a desiccated tree with branches. Come with me, said the gardener. We walked on a path towards a set of huts. “See.” It was perfect. A teakwood-coloured branch with a brick stuck in a groove. A natural and a manmade element. I subsequently found two rocks for the base, each a little larger than a wrestler’s skull, and pitted in an interesting ‘I have spent centuries being lashed by rain’ way.</p> <p>Through the quest, the adventures, the questions and my choices, it would not surprise me if I were developing the quality of mindfulness. To observe, spend each moment in that moment, to notice, to cut down the drift in one’s life. I have begun to notice what I observe. While driving over a flyover I see large white plastic pots containing flowering bougainvillaea, the dramatic fan shaped ferns lounging outside the bungalows of Lutyen’s Delhi, and the purple flush of jacaranda flowers in the roundabouts.</p> <p>In the garden at least, if in no other part of our lives, we can dream a future, says gardening correspondent Anna Pavord. So dream on and feed your soul.</p> <img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/Earthlydelight.jpg?itok=BtEeAtCA" /><div>BY: Shylashri Shankar</div><div>Node Id: 22441</div> Wed, 18 Jan 2017 14:04:15 +0000 vijayopen 22441 at http://www.openthemagazine.com A Coffee Break in Tradition http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/a-moveable-feast/a-coffee-break-in-tradition <p>I WAKE UP every morning and absolutely have to smell the coffee! In the upper compartment of the Bialetti stovetop coffee maker, I put one heaped tablespoon of Devan’s coffee (a blend of Malabar monsoon and organic coffee) or Coorg coffee from a small plantation (if I am lucky to find someone willing to bring it for me from Bengaluru). It simmers on the cooking range and within five minutes, the whooshing sound of the decoction indicates that the coffee is ready. I pour it into a large mug, add a dash of boiled milk, and a teaspoon of soft dark brown sugar to offset the bitterness.</p> <p>This ritual, I assumed, was ingrained in my genes. That I was replicating an age-old tradition in Tamilian households. Well, complete hogwash. Though coffee was grown in Mysore in the 18th century, it turns out, coffee drinking by locals is of recent vintage in Madras. ‘The habit of coffee drinking, I believe, entered our household only a few years before my birth [in 1915]... Probably, it was only after 1918 that coffee drinking became a tradition with my father.’ This is N Subramanian, a historian and author, quoted by Venkatachalapathy in ‘In those days there was no coffee.’</p> <p>How does something like coffee become a tradition? In 1983, British historians Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger edited a volume entitled <em>The Invention of Tradition</em> where the contributors explored examples of invented traditions in Scotland (did you know that the highlanders did not form a distinct people before the late 17th century?), and the pageantry of the monarchy in Great Britain and Victorian India, among others. Tradition, as Hobsbawm and Ranger point out, is unlike custom, which has to be flexible. Tradition imposes invariance— the bugles that signal the end of Beating the Retreat on Republic Day cannot be replaced by drums. And unlike convention, which displays a habit or routine, tradition has a significant ritual or symbolic function.</p> <p>Drinking decoction coffee in South India fits the frame of tradition, rather than convention. Venkatachalapathy argues that coffee drinking became entrenched among the middle class and Brahmins in late colonial Tamil society as a way of creating a barrier with lower classes and castes. He says that earlier, everyone in the south drank <em>neeragaram</em>—made by adding water and salt to fermenting water drained after cooking rice. When coffee emerged in the late 19th century, there was much opposition from puritans in the middle-class intelligentsia who tended to be Brahmins. “Filter coffee is more addictive than even beer and arrack,” said one conservative. “In the last few years, some obnoxious stuff has emerged as eatables: coffee, tea, cocoa and liquor,” said another. More dire was coffee’s transgression into the habits of womenfolk. A correspondent wrote to Gandhi that the greatest obstacle to the success of the non-cooperation movement in Madras ‘are our women. Some of them are very reactionary and a very large number of the high class Brahman ladies have become addicted to many of the Western vices’. He rued the fact that these women drank coffee not less than three times a day.</p> <p>What is interesting is that the reaction to coffee changed dramatically in the 20th century. Venkatachalapathy argues that notions of what constituted Tamil identity came to be articulated through coffee, or <em>‘kapi</em>’. Why this occurred and who the authors were is a very difficult question to answer. In many cases, these traditions, as Hobsbawm and Ranger point out, are partly invented, and partly evolved in private groups or informally over a period of time.</p> <p>Coffee hotels or coffee clubs that served coffee with tiffin sprang up everywhere from the 1920s to 1950s. Run by Brahmins who reserved separate sections for those of their caste in these hotels. Dalit writers abhorred this custom. Here is a definition in the Tamil equivalent of Devil’s Dictionary: ‘A public tavern instituted by Brahmins. A messenger from God to break Brahmin orthodoxy.’</p> <p>Tamil Brahmins created utensils that would accommodate their notions of purity. Coffee was served in metal tumblers with rims, so that it could be drunk without sipping and thereby reducing the risk of pollution. The attributes of good coffee, also referred to as ‘degree coffee’ included no chicory, cow’s milk (not buffalo milk, which was seen as a sign of cultural and moral degeneration), and was to be savoured at frequent intervals in small tumblers (not large ones), at a temperature that could be gulped down without burning the tongue. Remember that the right way to drink coffee was to tilt one’s head, raise an arm and pour coffee into the mouth from at least a foot away to avoid the risk of the lips touching the rim.</p> <p>An interesting aspect of these commandments, particularly the latter two (savouring in small but frequent doses, and warm but not piping hot) is that Italians (who are fanatical about coffee) too follow these directives. Coffee professionals these days say that good coffee should be savoured at a warm 46≤ C rather than very high temperature (which is reserved for bad coffee). It does make one wonder if each food, in this case coffee, expresses its most flavourful self at a particular temperature and in a specific type of roast.</p> <p>Tea and tea-drinkers came to be identified with non-Brahmins, the urban working class, and low prices. Here we see a difference in the way tea was viewed by North and South Indians. In the north, all castes and classes consumed tea. In Madras, the middle-class appropriated coffee, though <em>The Hindu</em> newspaper served coffee to its press workers. The rest of the urban working classes were supposed to frequent teashops and (military) hotels run by Muslims.</p> <p>Ironically, tea performed a similar function for the upper class in England during the late 17th and 18th centuries. But tea drinking soon spread to the masses in that country by the late 19th century because tea became a symbol of urban sociability, and its medicinal properties were extolled in magazines and newspapers. Not so in India, where initially, North Indians proved resistant to tea, while coffee had already established a toehold in the south.</p> <p>It was only in the early 20th century, during World War I (and the dangers faced by cargo ships), that colonial authorities decided to sell tea locally. Concerted attempts were made by the tea industry to inculcate the habit by providing the drink cheaply at railway stations and in mills and offices and tea shops on the roadside. The Tea Board employed tea demonstrators to go to houses in large towns and cities and show them the proper way to brew tea. But the locals, who were used to drinking milk, did it their way. The result was quite un-British—<em>burkhevaali chai</em> (a layer of cream on tea), sweet milk tea and spiced tea. Tea in most parts of India except the south had, in Gautam Bhadra’s words, made the journey from being an imperial product to a national drink.</p> <p>So, why invent a tradition? The two British historians find three overlapping types of reasons: a) those establishing or symbolising social cohesion of groups (coffee among Brahmins and the middle classes fits in here); b) those establishing or legitimising institutions (pomp and pageantry); c) and those whose main purpose was socialisation, the inculcation of beliefs, value systems and conventions of behaviour.</p> <p>The difference between old and invented traditions is this: the old ones, such as not touching the tumbler with one’s lips in order not to pollute it with saliva, are a strongly binding social practice among some groups, whereas an invented one tends to be unspecific and vague as to the nature of values it inculcates in a group (think of patriotism, school spirit, painting the colours of a flag on one’s face for a football or these days, even cricket matches)</p> <p>What we can say is that the view of tradition as an age-old practice has to be revised. As does the notion of a strong and unchanging link between a tradition and an identity. Change is the constant for us these days, particularly due to the ongoing technological revolution.</p> <p>How tradition will comport with the global hobnobbing created by technology remains to be seen. We are in an age of more sophisticated scientific instruments, more rapid dissemination of hypotheses (two cups of coffee brings down blood pressure, or two glasses of red wine will reduce one’s propensity to have a heart attack, and so on) and more willingness on the part of people to change their eating habits and lifestyles. At the same time, we yearn for some fixed and unchanging points. Like the first cup of coffee in the morning. This is, after all, the reason why tradition emerges or is invented. It would not be surprising if we see a renaissance of the 19th century European style coffee houses in India. One of the best ‘retro’ coffee houses I have been to, and have made it a habit to visit each time I am in Chennai, is housed in Sunder Mahal in Jeypore colony. May a thousand more such C-houses bloom!</p> <img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/Coffee.jpg?itok=lB9lFbAf" /><div>BY: Shylashri Shankar</div><div>Node Id: 22340</div> Wed, 14 Dec 2016 16:26:50 +0000 vijayopen 22340 at http://www.openthemagazine.com Does Food Have a Religion? http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/a-moveable-feast/does-food-have-a-religion <p>FOOD IS CENTRAL to the ancient Vedic texts. The creation hymn of the Rigveda (10.90.4) divides all things into those that eat and those that do not eat (or are the eaten). ‘Food and eaters of food, that’s all there is’ (Satapatha Brahmana It is part of every rite of passage—thread ceremony, weddings, sixtieth birthdays, funerals, death anniversaries, and so on. Food links the ascetic, the <em>sadhu</em>, with common folk through the ritual of begging for alms and the subsequent giving and receiving of food. What one is permitted to eat and with whom, how much one should eat, from whom one can accept food, how food is to be prepared, and when one can eat are all central everyday questions governing the hierarchy of the caste system, appearing in the legal literature of the dharmasastra. Since about 80 per cent of Indians are Hindus, the question that comes to mind is this: is there a Hindu way of engaging with food?</p> <p>In 1976,anthropologist RS Khare wrote a monograph entitled <em>Culture and Reality</em>. In the introduction, he says that his initial impulse had been to write about food among Hindus; he wanted to conduct a cultural analysis on how eating practices were reconciled with what people said and what their ideology suggested. But he realised two things: the vast diversity of the subject, and the discrepancy between ‘what people say they do and what they actually do on the one hand, and what they think about this discrepancy and how they relate it to their system of ideology on the other.’ So Khare decided to focus on the cultural taxonomy of how Hindus handled food in some North Indian states. Here are his observations about the general attributes of a Hindu way of dealing with food.</p> <p>First, the Hindu ‘food cycle’ is neither regional nor caste specific; it involves ritual, social, economic, medical and nutritional elements. These are interconnected: what you eat determines what you are, defines what you will be, demarcates your social position and your spiritual aspirations. Second, the production and consumption of food among Hindus is ultimately kept subservient to divine forces—a characteristic, he says, that is consistent with the Hindu conception of human affairs in general. Third, the Hindu system takes the production of food for granted and focuses more on the consumption of food. This means that there is no collective effort in producing food and in the distribution and consumption. Individuals (and small groups) transact food in relation to individuals, not to a collective. This translates into a weak shared moral code, which he says, might explain why the Hindu is ‘harsh and unyielding as a grain dealer, although he may be found generously engaged in conducting annadanam (a gift of grain) on an auspicious occasion.’</p> <p>However, as Sanskritist Patrick Olivelle points out, it is hard to say that there is a single food ideology that can be termed Hindu and remains constant across time, region and sects. This is something we, in the 21st century, can agree on. Take the production of food. In recent years, particularly in the metropolis, there has been a shift in the way citizens deal with the production of food. More than any other era, we are connected to the global world through the revolution in telecommunications. Social media (YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, Email, Facebook, WhatsApp and so on) has created pathways to connect friends and strangers from different cultures, nationalities and ethnicities. There are hundreds of millions of mobile phone users in India. So, it is not surprising that ideas about the production of food too have diffused between continents. The emphasis on organic food, urban gardening, terrace and balcony kitchen gardens are all part of this movement. For instance, Bangalore’s horticultural department is promoting kitchen gardening in urban areas; about 10 per cent of the terraces in Bangalore have such gardens. The demand for organic produce is from the professional middle-class (with incomes between $4,000-$20,000 per year), but it is still not as high as in the West. So in this context, Khare’s observation about the low emphasis on the production of food in the Hindu mode of thinking is still relevant.</p> <p>Olivelle highlights a counterpoint to Khare’s reification of ‘Hindu’ in the article by Brian K Smith (1991): ‘Eaters, Food and Social Hierarchy in Ancient India: A dietary guide to a revolution in values’. The Vedic classification of reality into eaters and food, Smith argues, is a practical observation about the dog-eat-dog world, about the power inequalities between the big fish and the small fry. Vedic rituals were about winning this war by becoming the big fish rather than the eaten. Brahmins eat all those below them, while Kshatriyas eat the common folk, Vaisyas, but they may not eat Brahmins. Smith sees the changes in the food metaphors (the emphasis on purity, for example, rather than power) and the rise of vegetarianism at the end of the Vedic period (500 BCE) with the simultaneous emergence of Buddhism and Jainism, as the start of the rise in importance of asceticism.</p> <p>If so, this is a very interesting development in two ways. First, it is a conceptual shift within Hinduism from associating meat-eating with power, to equating eating plants and grains with purity (though arguably power continues to pervade the issue). Second, the shift to vegetarianism and the importance given to asceticism is contrary to the move in other parts of the world, such as in Western philosophical writings (Nietzsche, Kant), where it is meat that provides strength and power.</p> <p>The concept of a Hindu mode of engaging with food helps us understand the assumptions underpinning calls for vegetarianism in India. In November 2014, an organisation associated with the RSS sent a letter to the Central Government that only vegetarian food be served to students in IIT, and this letter along with 20 others, was forwarded to the IITs by the Government, which asked them to consider separate eating areas. The letter was written by SK Jain, a trader and an RSS member from Madhya Pradesh, who said that eating non-vegetarian food was part of the West’s influence on India. ‘Non-vegetarian food is not part of Indian culture...children who eat non-vegetarian food have saddened their parents by their ‘tamasic’ (inertia-inducing) behaviour. They are deviating from the Indian value system because food has a direct correlation with their thoughts.’ Several of these statements are factually incorrect. Beef was consumed in Vedic times, and later too by Brahmins. An ancient medical text dating from 5 BCE, the Charaka Samhita, has a verse in a chapter on food: ‘the flesh of cows, buffaloes and hogs, should not be eaten daily’; and the author recommends beef for pregnant women to strengthen the foetus. The Brahmana of the Yajur Veda list different ceremonies which require the meat of cattle for their performance, and the type of cattle to be sacrificed (a red cow to Rudra, a barren cow to Vishnu and Varuna, and so on). In <em>Food and Drinks in Ancient India</em>, R Mitra points out that the only restriction on a pious Hindu while purchasing meat was that he had to offer a portion of it, after dressing it, to the gods, guests, or beggars, which sufficed to accomplish a <em>yagna</em>. The mischievous killing of cattle is included among secondary offences, and expiation for it is comparatively slight as compared to the heinous crime of killing a Brahmin.</p> <p>Notwithstanding these inaccuracies, the letter is interesting in two ways: it demonstrates Khare’s ‘Hindu style of thinking’; and it highlights the conceptual element of seeing food in terms of the principles it represents: for example, meat produces inertia in children.</p> <p>A Hindu mode of thinking, Khare points out, recognises reality (or practice) as an integral part of thought, but also makes actual (external) existence of objects only an extension of the primary conceptual principles. So a physically existing substance like food is conceived only in terms of the major principles (or meanings) it represents and its external physical existence is not given any independent validity. For instance, in <em>prasaadam</em>, the thought is concerned only with divine grace (<em>kripa</em>); in <em>anna daan</em>, it is the thought of the <em>daan</em> (the giving) that commands other characteristics; and in cow dung, it is the representation of the divine principle through parts and products of the sacred cow that is in focus.</p> <p>But as we saw earlier, there isn’t just one Hindu mode of thinking about food. The association between a food concept (vegetarian) and a value system (Indian) by the Hindu Right organisations collides with ancient practices of non-vegetarianism and the continuing ideas held by a majority of Indians. A 1993 study by the Anthropological Survey of India revealed that 88 per cent of Indians are non-vegetarian. A 2006 survey by CSDS revealed that only 31 per cent of Indians are vegetarian (and only 21 per cent for families where all members are vegetarian). In fact, 8 per cent of the Christians surveyed were vegetarian. A National Statistical Sample survey on household consumption in 100,000 households in 2011-12 shows that as people get richer, they consume more meat, fish, eggs and nutrient-rich food. The consumption of meat and fish has risen from 1 kg per capita in 2004 to 2.5 kg per capita in 2014, and is expected to almost double in 2023.</p> <p>More recently, <em>The Hindu</em> newspaper banned the entry of ‘non-veg’ lunches to its canteen. These clashes of value systems within Hinduism are not new, but the entry of globalisation through technological connections may be a game changer. The only thing we can be sure of is that whatever emerges will be part of the Hindu mode of thinking about food.</p> <img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/Foodreligion.jpg?itok=BAzTewtz" /><div>BY: Shylashri Shankar</div><div>Node Id: 22241</div> Wed, 16 Nov 2016 15:52:25 +0000 vijayopen 22241 at http://www.openthemagazine.com Of Pain and Palate http://www.openthemagazine.com/article/a-moveable-feast/of-pain-and-palate <p>WE ALL KNOW of someone who has, or have, as in my case, suffered from the excruciating joint pain produced by the mutated virus making the rounds of Delhi since August. The advice from the doctor was to drink lots of water, and have several baths in lukewarm water to bring down the temperature. “We know very little about how and why the virus flits from one victim to another, and we have no antidote to the virus,” said the doctor. She added that some pharmaceutical companies are experimenting with ways to breed ‘killer’ male <em>Aedes aegypti</em> (the dengue mosquito) by feeding it with goat’s blood and fish food, and releasing it to mate with the female; the eggs would contain a fatal gene that would kill the new mosquitoes before they could fly. But that did not help with my pain.</p> <p>It has taken two months for the pain to subside in my ankles, feet, wrists and hands. This is after a daily regimen of physiotherapy and ayurvedic pills, 16 glasses of water, a glass of coconut water, a bowl of papaya, and a banana. I have no idea whether these helped alleviate the joint pain or whether the virus travelled its course and exited when it decided that it had inflicted enough torture on me.</p> <p>But why did I experience such severe pain while my husband, who had the same infection, seems to have cruised through quite smoothly? Doctors have no answer. I decided to use this as a wake-up call to change parts of my diet. I now have coconut water and papaya every day, and hope that even if there is no causal link with preventing another bout of viral fever, the placebo effect might kick in. My own response made me wonder whether the experience of an epidemic changes the dietary patterns of a society, and if so, the sort of changes we gravitate towards.</p> <p>Food science researcher Barry Popkin highlights five patterns of nutrition in human history. The first pattern, the paleolithic pattern linked with hunter-gather societies, had a very healthy diet but infectious diseases and other natural causes resulted in a very short life span. The second pattern, when modern agriculture and a period of famine emerged, was one in which nutritional status worsened. In pattern three, famine begins to recede as income rises; pattern four sees changes in diet and activity patterns, and more new diseases and disability. In pattern five, behavioural change begins to reverse the negative tendencies of the preceding patterns and enables a process of successful ageing. A range of factors (including urbanisation, economic growth, technical change and culture) drives all the changes. Some parts of India are in pattern three, others in pattern four. But none are in pattern five. I wonder if the chikungunya epidemic is part of pattern four—studies show that dietary patterns have changed in urban India (consumption of animal and partially hydrogenated fats and lower intake of fiber), and, combined with less active lifestyles and a rise in obesity (a United Nations study states that in 1998, about 4.8 per cent were overweight and 0.5 per cent obese), may be making us more vulnerable to new diseases.</p> <p>If we are in pattern four, how do we move to the low-obesity, low-disease and tasty-nutrition pattern five? One route is the South Korean way. As Popkin points out, the South Korean government has promoted a traditional diet rich in vegetables and low in fat, and has warned against Western cuisine. It seems that for many decades the government has provided intensive training to newly married women on the preparation of traditional dishes. The result has been lower obesity levels and lower intake of energy from fat than would be expected given the high income level of the country.</p> <p>Now, this route would not be very popular in a country like India where the first reaction to any ‘advice’ from the Government is to challenge it in print, on television, through public interest litigation in courts, and in drawing room and tea shop conversations. Opponents would see it, and rightly so, as a perpetuation of patriarchy. But there is another aspect to the South Korean example—the government there had reverted to traditional food rather than creating new products.</p> <p>I decided to start with ayurveda. And that, in itself, is an interesting choice. After all, the humoural theory underlying ayurveda has an ancient lineage, and was the reigning monarch in medical sciences until the 19th century. In brief, the theory presumes that a human body is a living microcosm of the universe, and that health exists when there is a balance between three fundamental bodily humours or <em>doshas</em> (energies). The treatment for an ailment in this system lies in accurately measuring the dysfunctioning <em>dosha</em>, and providing a system of food and drink and medicines based on plants to the patient.</p> <p>The interesting aspect of the choice of ayurveda is this: anecdotal evidence from fellow sufferers reveals that they too have resorted to Guggulu tablets produced from the sap of a medicinal plant, <em>Commiphora Mukul</em>. Others who cannot afford these tablets have stripped the leaves of papaya trees and consumed the water from the boiled leaves. The belief in such remedies cuts across class, caste and geographic boundaries. Physicians may dismiss the relief expressed by these patients as a placebo effect. But the term ‘placebo effect’ includes a broader array of nonspecific aspects such as the modulation of expectations, anxiety, and self-awareness in the patient. In the 16th century, French philosopher Michel de Montaigne wrote: ‘There are men on whom the mere sight of medicine is operative.’</p> <p>For a placebo effect to work, it seems that the patient needs to believe in the effectiveness of the medicine (in this case, papaya leaves), and needs to trust the doctor (in this case, the system of ayurveda or a grandmother or cultural lore). This means that the patient needs to be suggestible. Studies have shown that the placebo effect works for chronic pain and inflammation, by stimulating the release of endogenous opiates, the body’s natural painkillers.</p> <p>Since the joint pain was an arthritic condition produced by chikungunya, I explored research on the food that would alleviate the pain. The ancient Sanskrit text, <em>Sushruta Samhita</em>, edited and translated into English by Kaviraj Kunja Lal Bhishagratna, has a number of dietary prescriptions for pain relief. An article in an international quarterly journal of research in ayurveda discusses the treatment of fifty patients with osteoarthritis in the knee joints (including pain, stiffness and swelling). Apart from massage, fomentation therapy and the application of leeches, the dietary prescriptions include <em>mudgayusha</em> (mung bean soup), <em>chapaatis</em> of wheat flour, boiled vegetables, and rice. Patients are instructed not to take sour, fermented, or spicy food and to avoid <em>Atishrama</em> (heavy work), <em>Ratrijagarana</em> (night vigils) and <em>Divasvapa</em> (daytime sleep). Significant relief was observed in the extension of the knee joint for most patients. Of course, it is a minuscule sample, but anything that suggests a positive effect was highly welcome to my mind.</p> <p>I signed up for an ayurvedic dinner at a hotel in Delhi. We had to answer a one-page questionnaire on whether our hair and skin were dry or oily, etcetera. Based on that, the ayurveda doctor attributed a <em>dosha</em> to each of us, and the choice seemed spot on, at least for me. The chef had prepared a three-course meal based on whether one’s <em>dosha</em> was primarily <em>vata</em> (air), <em>pitta</em> (fire), or <em>kapha</em> ( earth). But the food for a <em>vata </em>person like me was quite unappetising. Coconut juice, a goat’s cheese and sweet potato salad, more sweet potatoes in the main course (or fish with coconut sauce for non-vegetarians), and a saffron <em>phirni</em> for dessert. I am not a great fan of coconut milk or sweet dishes, so you can imagine my reaction. A (<em>pitta</em>) fellow diner, who had a gluten free vegetarian meal, murmured with a grimace that her main course tasted like dessert.</p> <p>Though this is not an indictment of all ayurveda-prescribed food, there is a crying need for modern dishes that can, for instance, balance the sweetness of the prescribed ingredient with predilection of the eater for sour and astringent flavours. We also need to take the relationship between what we consume and how we experience its effects more seriously. ‘The Laws of Medicine’, as Siddhartha Mukherjee points out, are really laws of uncertainty, imprecision and incompleteness. In a book with the same title, he writes that for him, the profusion of medical facts about the naming of parts, diseases and chemical reactions obscured a deeper and more significant problem: the reconciliation of knowledge (certain, fixed, perfect, concrete) with clinical wisdom (uncertain, fluid, imperfect, abstract).</p> <p>Since clinical wisdom, particularly in relation to new epidemics, is woefully imperfect, it would not be foolhardy for us patients to trust the power of our minds in conjunction with alternative and traditional wisdoms about what we consume, to overcome the pain caused by physical manifestations of an ailment. It is, I think, up to each one of us to figure out a diet that agrees with our taste buds.</p> <img src="http://www.openthemagazine.com/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/public%3A/Painandpalate.jpg?itok=8egqVjZ6" /><div>BY: Shylashri Shankar</div><div>Node Id: 22099</div> Wed, 12 Oct 2016 15:34:48 +0000 vijayopen 22099 at http://www.openthemagazine.com