Archival Of The Fittest

The great Indian thali is a bridge that connects our past with our future. The grains we eat today and the recipes we bookmark for tomorrow will eventually shape the way the next generation sees Indian food

- Sonal Ved

Snippets of food wisdom have been woven into culture for thousands of years. In Gujarati households like mine, folk songs are used to overcome the tantrums of fussy eaters. I recall my grand-aunt singing during the monsoon, Avaryo warsaad/Gheverio prashad/Uni uni rotli aney karela nu saak (The rain pours/Deity’s food is sweet/ Hot chapati and bitter vegetable curry), an antidote to my wrinkled nose every time bitter gourd showed up on the dinner table. The song emphasises eating bitter foods to boost immunity. Friends recount similar stories: a Bengali song about a dancing ilish that points to its status as one of the few fish permissible to eat during the rains, and a Tamil folklore about a mango that directs the eater to peel it delicately.

So while archiving recipes and cooking techniques that may be forgotten in future is all the rage internationally, in India, it’s an everyday affair. “Historically, in India, archiving was practised by the ruling class—the royals, the nawabs, the Rajputs and the badshahs. They started cataloguing what they did for the welfare of the masses, like the Ain-i-Akbari, for example. But now, we archive because we don’t want to lose that bit of history,” says Shubhra Chatterji, director and researcher of Lost Recipes, a two-season show that aired on the TV channel Epic in 2015 and 2019. Across 23 episodes, Chatterji archived over 70 underdog recipes, like the precious kabishambardhana barfi, made out of cauliflower florets, said to be among Rabindranath Tagore’s favourites.

LOST AND FOUND