Shrimp aviyal, anyone?

A potluck with layers of caste and class

October 03, 2021 12:02 am | Updated 12:02 am IST

Much research, both anthropological and ethno-political, have been done on the evolution of our food habits. The hierarchy and dominance of food; the politics of vegetarianism and non-vegetarianism; and diminishing heterogeneity are a few important topics. The studies have mapped caste and class to the hierarchy of taste, extending beyond the demarcation of vegetarian and non-vegetarian food. Caste and class, couched in the less-known narratives of food, permeate the layers of sub-communities.

In India, each region and sub-region has its own distinct cuisine. Growing up in Vypeen, a coastal belt in Ernakulam district of Kerala, I have been familiar with some authentically coastal cuisines that are not known to, and not widely enjoyed by, “mainstream” Kerala. The dishes in the coastal areas, for obvious reasons, centre on fish. Rice with fish curry is the staple.

My mother’s family, from Thrissur, sarcastically says the village air is thick with the stench of shrimps, and we add them even to sambar. We do so not in sambar , but in aviyal . Shrimp as a key ingredient in otherwise vegetarian dishes is a unique characteristic of the cuisine in this coastal belt.

We make mezhukkuperatti (a vegetarian stir fry elsewhere) of raw plantain, bitter gourd and long beans with shrimps. Vegetables cooked in the stock of fresh shrimps taste heavenly. And if you do not have fresh shrimps, dried ones, stocked by every kitchen for an entire year, come to the rescue. Ask any islander, she will say the taste is to die for! It is a taste that grows on you.

Any new person coming to the island may fret over the taste of shrimps in “everything”. My mother took much time to get acquainted with the curries full of shrimps that my grandmother and her cook made. It annoyed her first, but the combination of shrimps and vegetables grows on you, and if you ask my mother, she will say she has become more an islander than any of us.

Nevertheless, a divide exists. As for the recipes, they did not cater to everyone. I have heard my mother saying, “we” cook shrimps only with so and so vegetables, but “they” don’t spare a single vegetable, “they” even add it to curries made with amaranthus and ivy gourd. “They” refers to the local fishermen, or Araya, community. The dish was commonly cooked in the households of fisherfolk, and later entered the kitchens of the rest of the population (ex-untouchable castes).

Clearly, the preparation is indicative of a way of living and livelihood. My mother may not even recognise the politics of the seemingly harmless statement that she made and even if I pointed it out, she would have countless reasons to prove it otherwise — for the underpinnings of caste in terms of food is much deeper than she would have ever known.

There are so many recipes that “we”, my parents and grandparents, don’t even try at home because it belongs to “them”, who are much lower in the social order, hinting at the ways caste and class operate in disguise. My grandmother’s maid used to collect the discarded yellow glob of fat in the head of shrimps in the leaves of poo paruthi , and tug down a raw papaya from the tree on the way back home to cook the two together for lunch. I have never eaten it. The dishes that could have transmitted seamlessly because of ages of close interaction never crossed over the hedge.

Tastes on the margins

Shambuda, who used to run a Bengali dhaba on the university campus where I studied, once in a while made a not very popular dish — stir-fried fish eggs with bitter gourd. Who would have thought of it! The seemingly odd combination certainly required a palate that has done quite a bit of unlearning and learning, in terms of food. While living in Kolkata a few years ago, I asked my neighbour about this particular dish. With a tinge of prestige, she said she was not familiar with the recipe.

As we moved across the barriers and became friends, my cook started making local foods that are not part of the mainstream cuisine. Up until then, I had eaten only the imperious dishes the city boasts of: bhetki paturi , shorshe illish and daab chingri . When I had my first morsel of sticky Gobind bhog rice with seeds of Malabar spinach and shrimps cooked together, I was home again.

They were curries that my friends in Kolkata had not even heard of, but very close to the “shrimp with vegetable” dishes back home. Another day, with much enthusiasm and a little hesitation, Didi offered to cook “something special” — fish fat cooked with vegetables. She recalled how they used to line up for the discarded fat when they could not afford fish. Today, she can, but still relishes the dish and knowing my fondness for local food, Didi wanted me to taste it. As I eat, I quietly realise that this is how “their” dish, my grandmother’s help Mani’s, must have tasted — the forbidden one that I never got to eat.

These cuisines are not suppressed, but not celebrated either. There is a historically evolved wilful hierarchy and simultaneous subordination even among the “lower ranked” castes. Even when food unifies, there is a divide. There is still a long way for indigenous dishes to be appreciated and, more importantly, embraced by their own community. These foods defend and preserve the taste of their ancestors, and hence the history.

resmiprakash@gmail.com

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