Dhrubo Jyoti picks their favourite read of 2024
Part cookbook, part social commentary and part anthropological exposition, this volume reveals the harsh truths of culinary discrimination but never slips into despair
Food sits at the heart of Indian life. It is the currency of culture, the vessel through which joys are communicated and sorrows shared. It buoys community pride and etches the identity of a region. It takes pride of place in gatherings big and small, and occupies a big chunk of popular culture – books, movies and plays. But food is also a segregator. It is used to divide and discriminate, and draw clear and harsh lines of hierarchy between communities. It is imbued with the inequity that is the bedrock of Indian society, ensuring that while some culinary practices become celebrated and representative of a country or a region, others are erased from collective memory.


Shahu Patole’s Anna He Apoorna Brahma, translated by Bhushan Korgaonkar and released this year as Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada, straddles this contradiction, shining a spotlight on the cultural traditions, culinary techniques and beliefs of marginalised castes in Maharashtra. In a landscape littered with mundane recipe cookbooks and maudlin memoirs, Patole’s voice rings out as sharp, precise and powerful. The slim volume bitingly reveals the harsh truths of culinary discrimination but never slips into despair. It is part cookbook, part social commentary and part anthropological exposition. It punctures the rhetoric of purity and vegetarianism, talks evocatively about the practices followed by Dalit communities to celebrate highs and honour losses, and paints a lively picture of a lifeworld that has not yet entered the lexicon of Indian writing in English. And it does so while treading lightly and including an array of recipes, not all of which are straightforward (some of the mutton ones are particularly tricky, by experience). It is a remarkable achievement.