Tuesday, September 18
Fish, Flesh & Foul Writing
Written for Outlook Traveller: I no longer have this book in my possession, and I sometimes wonder if it deserved to be flung across the room more gently. But I remember at the time I was ready to torch it.
It is a challenge for any writer, however well-traveled and well-dined, to promise an odyssey through the diversity and abundance of Indian cuisine. When the book is written for non-Indians, however, and breaks every few sentences to explain what a dosa is, it is not likely to get very far into the odyssey at all. So it is with Chitrita Banerji’s Eating India - high tolerance of the word "legume" is advised.
So is a high tolerance for hyperbole. Banerji describes India the way you might expect of an especially humourless ambassador’s wife. Her writing is so overinfused with adjectives of scent and flavour you want to run out and check that it’s possible to find a sandwich and a glass of water. Banerji turns every scent "intoxicating", every red "ruby red", even if it’s no such shade at all. Surfeit comes before the first chapter is over.
Partly, this is what is expected of the genre of food pornography. Partly, it is a way to cover up shallow research. In its Oriental caricature, Indian food has no real sociology; it only has folklore, which Banerji layers on like spice to cover up the bad taste of too little travel and diligence. She contrives to make every visit to a popular local eatery sound like the rediscovery of Khajuraho, simply because nobody has ever returned from them before with such florid tales.
It is a challenge for any writer, however well-traveled and well-dined, to promise an odyssey through the diversity and abundance of Indian cuisine. When the book is written for non-Indians, however, and breaks every few sentences to explain what a dosa is, it is not likely to get very far into the odyssey at all. So it is with Chitrita Banerji’s Eating India - high tolerance of the word "legume" is advised.So is a high tolerance for hyperbole. Banerji describes India the way you might expect of an especially humourless ambassador’s wife. Her writing is so overinfused with adjectives of scent and flavour you want to run out and check that it’s possible to find a sandwich and a glass of water. Banerji turns every scent "intoxicating", every red "ruby red", even if it’s no such shade at all. Surfeit comes before the first chapter is over.
If I had never eaten Indian, this kind of salesman’s enthusiasm would make me suspect that something was fundamentally wrong with the product. Then there are the verbs. Constant, sentence-by-sentence reminders that she is relishing, delighting and devouring give you the impression that she spent her entire time in India rolling her eyes and dragging her tongue up and down the streets in a delirium of sensory excess.
Partly, this is what is expected of the genre of food pornography. Partly, it is a way to cover up shallow research. In its Oriental caricature, Indian food has no real sociology; it only has folklore, which Banerji layers on like spice to cover up the bad taste of too little travel and diligence. She contrives to make every visit to a popular local eatery sound like the rediscovery of Khajuraho, simply because nobody has ever returned from them before with such florid tales.
In a chapter on Karnataka, she only visits Bangalore’s best known tiffin room and supermarket. While there, she alternates between writing as a native and a naif – sometimes full of secret understanding, other times quivering like a virgin at the excitement of trying "that odd Southern concoction," curd-rice. By the time she got to talking about locals in "sarongs" hawking the "last cereal grain I was expecting" – corn – I was swearing aloud. Banerji may be a prolific writer on Bengali food, but her effort to reach for cuisines across India is just bad table manners.
