Opinion-Editorial: Food Is Culture...ctd

Dev Kartan Red & Black Contributor

From a less emotionally educating perspective the food lends itself to geographical and historical understanding. Even within India, there are SO many languages, customs, norms, religions, and people. The culture of our subcontinent is so diverse, extending right into how cuisine is experienced across the country. For example, not even factoring in local and regional recipes, North and South Indians vary widely in their cuisine. From north indians preferring roti and more milder flavors to south indians preferring rice and spicier flavors dating back to farming and meat preservation practices. Cuisine is undeniably tied to how Indian society evolved and by extension how culture developed.

When people can’t differentiate how ethnicity differs from language from religion, confusing Hindu for Hindi for Indian and using all of them interchangeably, it is so apparent that there is a lack of fundamental understanding. When we don’t have the vocabulary, we are rendered unable to em- pathize with experience. And there are so many experiences we have yet to share, from prasad, to the sweets we get at the temple, to the absolutely amazing street food, to finer culinary gastronomy, and so many flavors and spices it would take forever to name them all.

We feel EXTREMELY strongly about cuisine as a cultural experience. Especially on campus, we strive to do the most good we can and raise the most cultural awareness possible with what limited time we have. Food at events is undoubtedly one of our strongest tools for education.

Although I’ve been speaking only on my own experiences thus far, I’ve asked other members of our exec board to write a few words which I will read off on their behalf.

“In elementary school, I grew up vegetarian just like my parents and was often taunted because of this. One day, another peer threw a piece of bologna at my face and told me to eat it. Not only was this traumatizing but it also made me hesitant to eat Indian food in front of my peers. I spent months eating in the nurse’s office or library just to avoid the comments students would make.”

“Everytime I go back to India, my family asks me for an itinerary of meals to eat. Not where I want to go, or what I want to do, what I’d like to sit down and eat with them, and I don’t know, it just feels like poetry. I miss them a lot, and I want to be able to experience something close to that on campus. Like even chaat and chat was so much fun just being in that space with everyone with the music playing and laughing and, I don’t know it just felt like a taste of home.”

We have many more but for the sake of brevity I’ll digress

I hope through this little writeup you see how important food is to our culture and events. We feel like it is an essential part of our experience as second-gen generation immigrants and just want to be able to share that with everyone here. Thank you so much for your time and I hope you choose to support more meal-based events in the future, as you cannot separate the cuisine from the culture.