At Electric Lit Qadri tagged seven books about the messy politics of Indian meals. One entry on the list:
Chhaunk by Abhijit BanerjeeRead about the other books on the list at Electric Lit.
How are roadside chowmein and foreign policy related? What does a disappointing New Year’s Eve have in common with Universal Basic Income? Few authors can extrapolate the dreary slog of everyday life to economic theories without being overly didactic, but Banerjee suffers from no such predicament. Every chapter begins with a juicy anecdote about food—in one, a sanyasi suckles lasciviously at a ripe mango on a crowded train, putting on a show for his scandalised audience; in another, a group of friends skip lunch to make their evening meal of sutli kebabs feel more rewarding, only to find that hunger has fettered every ounce of their mental energy.
Then, almost as if by chance, Banerjee begins to drift away—drawing unexpected parallels to Xi Jinping’s domestic policy, India’s malnutrition problem, the erosion of democracy, undertrial prisoners. Nothing is too frivolous, everything is related, and it almost always circles back to food. But while Chhaunk is a sobering reminder that the personal has always been political, Banerjee’s writing is laced with levity, making it an easily digestible read in spite of its heft.
--Marshal Zeringue
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