Calcutta on Your Plate by Nilosree Biswas
Reviewed by
Shankhadeep Ghosal
Independent
Researcher
M.A. (English),
NET-JRF
Purba
Bardhaman, West Bengal, India
Calcutta on Your Plate | Academic | Nilosree Biswas |
Rupa Publications
India Pvt., 2022, pp. 208, INR 283
ISBN 978-93-5520-774-6
Calcutta on Your Plate by Nilosree Biswas succinctly captures the
complicated gastronomic history of Calcutta and how the Calcutta’s culinary
identity gets diversified with the advent of foreign interlopers belonging to
different centuries. Instead of chronological narration of the various
influences that shaped and enriched the Bengali Cuisine, the author employs the
‘back and forth’ technique to formulate the discourse on the complex foodscape
of Calcutta. Putting colonized Bengal at the backdrop, the author seeks to
underscore the evolution of Calcutta’s food culture that was influenced by the
overseas culinary practices, particularly by that of Britain. With the ever
increasing supremacy of British East India Company over Calcutta and its
adjacent territories, a new class of affluent Babus (elite Bengalis) emerged in the then social scenario, who
became allured to emulate the sophistication of British lifestyle in every
respect. Being plunged into the anglicized luxuriousness, the household
kitchens of Bengali affluents started to experiment with firangi
recipes and as a result of which many delectable dishes, starting from fowl
cutlet, kabiraji to Roshogolla, Ledikeni, made steady inroads into the foodscape of the City of
Joy, that is, Calcutta. With the passage of time, these trending dishes started
to find home with the mainstream traditional Bengali dishes and as a result of which
Calcutta’s food culture became hybridized and more inclusively complex in
nature. In a nutshell, this book is an exemplary specimen of Calcutta’s
gastronomic evolution that journeyed through the socio-political turmoil of
colonized Bengal.
Calcutta
on Your Plate, the
book under review, contains four chapters which are intricately interwoven with
the common thread of Calcuttan’s gastrophilic orientation. In the opening
chapter, the author sets the background by depicting the socio-political
scenario of Bengal where the East India Company’s (EIC) objective was to make
today’s Kolkata a habitable station for trading. But this dream of making
Calcutta London of the East was not an overnight outcome rather it took a lot
of efforts in the form of politico-administrative adjustments with the
provincial rulers. Job Charnock, the agent of the company, played a crucial
role in this transformation of a river side marshy land covered with deep
jungles into a city of elite Europeans where with the passage of time different
cultures started to mingle to make Calcutta a vibrant space in the map. It is
with the gradual commercial prosperity of the company, Bengali affluent class
started to flourish by involving themselves into the business ventures with the
Company agents and as result of it, urbanization began in Calcutta in the form
of establishment of markets, European colonies, babu colonies, restaurants, to name only a few. These cultural
transactions coupled with territorial transformations left unavoidable impacts
on the Bengali lifestyle in the form of household tendencies of imbibing the
European customaries in every respect. As the European culinary influences were
not in isolation from this event of cultural convergence, the newly educated
Bengali housewives started to read cookbooks and kitchen magazines in their
leisure to make themselves dab hands at both kitchen management and cooking
Eurocentric innovative scrumptious dishes. The author believes that it is not
only the process of acculturation which single-handedly impacted on the lives
of the Bengali people but also the business attachments with English companies
that influenced the culinary lifestyle of Bengalis.
The gradual transformation of Calcutta into a
well-planned city allured all who visited it with the passage of time. The city
started to exfoliate its traditional look to appear like a modern European
metropolis where the Bengalis were ready to welcome the intruding cultures
wholeheartedly. But the adaptation of these alien customs into the domestic
spaces was not a cakewalk for the orthodox Bengali families because of their
religious constrains. The more Bengalis came in contact with the foreign
settlers, the more these socio-religious conservative attitudes of Bengalis
started to shrink in response. It was because of the business tie-ups with the
European merchants that made Bengalis inclined towards the western customs and
rituals. The business tours made in different parts of India as well as in
abroad brought them in close contact with the western culinary delicacies. This
lavishness of the outside world slowly but surely crept into the household in
its miniature form where the Bengali housewives tried to emulate the recipes
famous in taverns, duck bungalows and foreign restaurants for their loved ones.
The ever-increasing anglophilic attitude of Bengalis welcomed all those food
and culinary practices which were once forbidden in the society and as a result
of it Bengalis started to become victim of the western gastropolitics in
colonial period. The author opines that this marked transformation in terms of
Bengali gustation was possible because of the escalation in the selling of
imported food products at the markets in Calcutta. On the other hand, the
strategic incorporation of some close shot photographs of delectable Bengali
desserts, snacks, starters and main course dishes towards the end of this
chapter inevitably promotes the culinary legacy of Bengalis, which takes this
shape as a result of the gastronomic evolution with time.
Putting the dynamic foodscape of Calcutta at
the backdrop, the penultimate chapter of this non-fictional work brings to
light the process of converting teenage girls into sugrihinis (expert housewives) who can efficiently take the charge
of all the domestic duties including cooking. Being an expert in cooking was so
essential feminine skill to be happy in conjugal life in then society that most
of the women schools used to provide mandatory training of culinary skills to
the girls so that they became a good cook in their in-laws houses. With the
advent of printing press in the city, cookbooks and domestic manuals became
popular among the newly wedded housewives as it prompted them to experiment
with cooking new recipes to win the hearts of all. Growing acquaintance with these
cook books brought culinary diversity in the domestic space, which in turn
further contributed to the gastronomic hybridization of the city. But this
effort of organizing themselves as sugrihinis
within the fabric of familial setup made their lives monotonous and
challenging. Throughout the nineteenth century, Calcutta witnessed so many
publications related to the culinary transformations of the city, from which it
is clear that the concept of authenticity in terms of Bengali food gradually
started to get diluted.
With the rapid growth and development of the
city, migrant workers from both villages and neighboring states in innumerable
numbers started to invade the city with the hope of securing livelihoods as the
city became a reservoir of immense possibilities for them. In this newly
invaded group of workers, Ranner thakur,
bawarchis or the male cooks played
crucial role in the culinary metamorphosis of the city. Although the charge of
indoor cooking rested mostly on the housewives, the bulk cooking in any social
events was the duty of these male cooks. In these social events and festivals
wide range of scrumptious dishes were cooked as Bengalis could not even think
of celebrations without the preparation of culinary delicacies. In a nutshell,
these social celebrations helped the Bengalis in adopting the culinary
improvisations and it further led to the formulation of a mosaic foodscape in
the city. Taking recourse to the Bengali tradition of mistimukh at the happy ending of any event, the author draws the
conclusion by depicting the evolution of sweetmeats in Calcutta. It was with
the invention of channa as the
byproduct of milk by the Portuguese settlers, the city saw a revolutionary
transformation in the production of wide variety of sweets. With the passage of
time, these sweets were proved to be the culinary treasure of the city and it
became one of the culinary attractions for both the visitors and city dwellers.
It was the khadya rashik (lover of
good food) nature of Bengalis that allowed foreign culinary influences to mix
up with the traditional Bengali cuisine.
Written in lucid language, Calcutta on Your Plate seamlessly
incorporates inter textual references of other food critics working on Bengali
food culture and as a result of which a comprehensive knowledge on gastronomic
evolution of Calcutta is formulated. On the other side, one may also find some
limitations in this non-fictional work. For instance, the author surprisingly
remains silent about the history of the establishments of some well known food
outlets of Calcutta like Mitra Café, Anadi Cabin, Golbari, Coffee House, to
name only a few, that have been serving the people of Calcutta since the early
twentieth century.Over the years these food outlets played crucial role in
making Calcutta’s richly diverse foodscape. Apart from that, this work
primarily focuses on the changing food habits of affluent class of the city
during colonial period due to the continuous interactions with overseas
culinary influences. But this book does not put much light on the evolving food
habits of the people belonging to the lower strata of the society.
Notwithstanding these shortcomings, Nilosree Biswas’ Calcutta on Your Plate is a great addition to the existing
knowledge of critical food studies and it would inspire modern scholars as well
as gourmets to delve deeper into the history of Bengali food culture.