Food & Films : A Flavorful Feast

#8- An essay on the intersection of two siginificant Indian Cultural influences - Food & Cinema

Image Courtesy : The Food Fellas

‘Humare pitaji kaha karte the, jo manushya kheer nahi khaya,

woh manushya yoni mein paida hone ka poornataha faayda nahi uthaaya’

- Masaan ( 2014)

A few square feet of space, that hosts an artistic spectacle, everyday - Welcome to the Indian Kitchen. The symphony of pressure cooker whistles, tempering of spices in hot oil, the sensual aroma of the fresh ingredients concocting with ghee, the rhythmic cadence of cutting & chopping sounds, the rainbow of colors, all meticulously coming together to create magic. This is the place where, varied ingredients from different parts of the country come together, to create a luscious culinary experience.

Indian Pop Culture has always made space for food. Cookbooks have been a prominent genre in the Indian publishing space, Cooking shows make for great entertainment, making Celebrity Chefs household names in the process.

With the digital explosion, food content democratised.  Content creators aren’t just professional chefs anymore, but come from all walks of life- Common men & women passionate about cooking, village communities or food vloggers. The storytelling has also evolved -be it chronicling the history & cultural significance of the dish, emphasis on the scientific process that’s at play, creative cinematography to elevate tempt, enhance the narrative on community sharing or platforming small business like street food vendors.

This brings us to the most celebrated medium of entertainment in Indian PopCulture-  Cinema. The medium has given some enthralling and memorable sequences, with food as the nucleus. 

Cinema has all the necessary tools to romanticize food -visual aesthetic frames, melodious music, poetic lyrics and ample time to build on a story. It has the means to celebrate food as a metaphor to resonate its significance, beyond the meal.

Food in cinema, has spoken about our culture, society & personal ambition through clever narrative devices. This can be captured in four broad themes-

• Brewing Connections

• Spirit of Celebration & Joy

• Pushing our limits to conquer

• Reflect on Deep- rooted biases

Brewing Connections

‘After a good dinner, one can forgive anybody, even one’s relatives’  - Oscar Wilde.

In a polarized world, food is a time-tested adhesive. Good food is the recipe for curating mood. There is proven research that good food produces the ‘feel good hormone’ serotonin, which relaxes the mind and improves the mood. Layer it with the experiential delight of taste, that launches the happy hormone ‘ dopamine’.

This satisfaction means a lowered guard & an openness to connect. 

Pop culture has leveraged this insight well. Advertising has iconic examples of food brands, where the product acts as an enabler to create bonds & bring people together. Two prominent examples that have done it exceedingly well : Cadbury Dairy Milk Chocolate with the timeless ‘Kuch Accha Ho Jaaye, Kuch Meetha Ho Jaaye’  , where a chocolate is an expression of gratitude/ celebration/ creating a new bond, or Red Label tea with their  ‘Swaad Apnepan Ka’  campaign, barriers are broken as people come together for a cup of tea.

Similarly, there are some memorable movie sequences where food brews new connections or cements existing relationships. 

In the movie Cheeni Kum ( Hindi, 2007, Dir : R. Balki),  the meet-cute of the protagonists is over the perfect recipe of ‘ Hyderabadi Zafrani Pulao’. Without uttering a word, the characters connect.

Another classic example of the theme is in the movie - The Lunchbox ( Hindi, 2013, Dir: Ritesh Batra).  As a result of a  rare mistake in the Six- Sigma efficiency of Mumbai dabbawalas, the lunchbox prepared by Ila for her husband, is mistakenly delivered to Saajan, a widower. What follows next is a conversation, exchanged through letters, in the lunchbox. In this captivating tale of characters jostling to decipher loneliness & relationships, food is the anchor that builds familiarity between characters.

The movie has another sequence where characters build a connection over food. Inviting someone for food at home is an invitation to your personal space. You are not just serving food, you are letting someone see ( and possibly judge) your home, loved ones. It is an expression of trust & vulnerability to let someone in your world. 

Shaikh ( Nawazuddin Siddiqui) invites Saajan( Irrfan Khan)  for dinner at his home and the comforting conversation over the meal, gives him the confidence to go ahead and ask for a favor like a family member, while eating a bowl of kheer.

At the cost of over-indulging on this theme , here’s a bonus scene - one of my personal favorites. This scene has everything going its way - Pankaj Tripathi’s charm, Richa Chaddha’s restraint & Pitaji ki banayi Kheer. Its a beautiful depiction of the everyday mundane occurence of colleagues eating lunch together and in the process getting to know each other better. 

Spirit of Celebration & Joy

Food on the plate is a social, economic & cultural miracle.This miracle itself deserves a celebration. Cinema has captured the celebratory aspect of food many times - through sweets, wedding sequences, cooking for a loved one. Be it the Hum Aapke Hai Kaun Song ‘Joote dedo, paise lelo’ with references to Ras Malai, Mithai, Paan, Thanda or the movie Stanley ka dabba that pays an homage to the everyday Tiffin Box (Dabba Song - Stanley Ka Dabba )

But one sequence that is the epitome of true celebration of food, is from the Cult Telugu Movie- Maya Bazaar ( Telugu, 1957,Dir: K.V. Reddy) . The Song Titled ‘Vivaha Bhojanambu’  is an homage to everything about food. The mythological movie is about an episode of  Mahabharata. In this sequence, Ghatotkacha ( Son of Bheem & Hidimba), who has magical powers to be a shapeshifter, who has been tasked to hinder a forced wedding, enters the kitchen where all delicacies of the wedding have been cooked and stocked.

The rest, as they say, is a tribute to gourmandizing. The lyrics of the song is a poetic praise of delicacies . This one is a guilty pleasure to indulge in visual gluttony. It is a dream - saying it any other way would be a lie. Relish the delicacies & the VFX without miss.

Pushing our Limits to Conquer

One of the finest emotive expressions in cinema, where food acted as a catalyst, has been the sequences where characters pushed their limits to beat all odds. This expression is raw & primal.

Kaaka Muttai ( Tamil, 2014, Director - M.Manikandan) is a movie that is evocative, yet poignant. The story is about two kids ,who are slum-dwellers. They lead a difficult yet unabashedly nonchalant life. Their life changes when a new pizza outlet opens near their home.

They are awe-struck and completely enamored. But as expected,, there are hurdles : right from money to class-bias, that stands in their way. The movie is a tale of their journey from imagining how delicious pizza would taste, to overcoming all hurdles on their way to make it happen.

Another example of a similar quest is the short film Murabba in the anthology Bombay Talkies ( Hindi, 2013, Director- Anurag Kashyap). The protagonist, in order to honor his father’s bizarre wish, sets on a quest with the homemade ‘Murabba’ ( ala marmalade). The mission : make Amitabh Bacchan take a bite  . The father’s belief is, it would have a similar recuperative effect on his health, the way his own father recovered after consuming the honey tasted by another superstar, Dilip Kumar.

The central theme of the film is this protagonist’s journey to make this impossible mission a reality - a bite of that one piece of ‘Murabba’ kept in the glass ‘martaban’ ( Jar).

The whole journey is beautifully summarized  in the poetry of the melodious song ‘ Murabba’ ( Lyricist:  Amitabh Bhattacharya, Music : Amit Trivedi, Singers: Kavita Seth,Amit Trivedi). The song symbolizes Murabba as a metaphor of life - exercise patience, perseverance, and relentless resolve to get a bite of the best outcome. 

‘Sabr ki meethi, chaashni mein bhigoke,

Waqt khada hai martabaan mein leke,

Le chakh le yeh Murabba”

“ Kal se bhi zyaada, aaj tar lagta hai,

Kal fir khana, behtar lagta hai,

Le chakh le yeh Murabba”

Reflect on Deep- Rooted Biases

Kitchens are symbolic mirrors of our deep rooted biases. We relish the ‘ Ghar ka khana’, but conveniently ignore the hours of toil  that goes behind it. To prepare meals three times a day, in hot & humid conditions, while accommodating preferences & nutritional requirements of family members, is no mean task. Often this ends with thankless faces, too occupied to spell even one word of appreciation.

Festivals take it a notch up. Festivals are a time to rejoice. They bring families together. But it also means cooking a wider spread. The cooking starts in the wee hours of the morning, most times on an empty stomach. 

And while each household is different, there are enough statistics to prove - this burden is placed on women.

The movie ‘ The Great Indian Kitchen’ ( Malayalam, 2021, Dir : Jeo Baby)  is one of the most important movies of our time. The protagonist, a post graduate girl, gets married in a patriarchal family. Her life post marriage : keep all her aspirations aside and undergo the drudgery of working in the kitchen and take care of the house, everyday.  The movie plays day-after-day journaling of her life.  It is a difficult watch - painful & uncomfortable.  It is difficult, only because it shows a true reflection of our own self.

Do take out time to watch the entire clip. 

This bias is brought to life in the movie ‘English Vinglish’ as well ( Hindi, 2012, Dir : Gauri Shinde).  While food is not the central catalyst of the story ( the central theme is the other bias we all hold - Command over a language), food is an impactful anchor in the movie.  Shashi ( Sridevi) is not fluent in English. Thus, there is a careless lack of seriousness her family demonstrates towards her. The conversations of family members are reductive in nature. Shashi is alone, in her own family.

But food is her happy space. She is skilled at preparing laddoos. It fills her up with enterprise. She loves the preparation & the adoration it gets from her customers. But the family hardly gives agency to this. Cooking is her duty, her allegiance should only be to taking care of the family - everything else is a distraction.

This comes through clearly when the husband says ‘ My  wife was born to make laddoos’, ‘ Only I should eat your food, why should others enjoy it’.

        ( Image Courtesy : Goya Blog- The Language of Laddoos in English Vinglish)

The clear sense of expectation from a woman, when it comes to cooking, is also a deep rooted bias. The movie captures it beautifully in a conversation Shashi has with a classmate ( At the English class) ‘When a man cooks, it's  art. When a woman cooks, it's her duty’.

The movie is about the journey of this protagonist and the realization of the family of their biases. Food comes back as an excellent tool in the narrative again in the climax scene, to brew connections ( Theme 1 of this article). It becomes a symbol of forgiveness and an expression of love . Shashi serves her acclaimed laddoos to all the guests at a wedding - one per plate. She makes an exception, only for her husband & serves him two.

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These examples are just a few handpicked ones that spoke the most to me. There must be many more examples in Indian Cinema which I may have missed or yet to see. But the intent is not to make a comprehensive listicle, but to draw patterns to observe the world around us. Food is  an integral ingredient of our life. It is a vehicle of creating & reliving memories.

The hope is, whatever our relationship with food is, we positively engage with it. We become mindful of what we eat, how we eat & take a step back to really introspect on the effort that goes behind it. Even if you are not someone who celebrates food and believes in its deep-rooted meaning in our lives, your participation in the kitchen is the best ingredient you can add to this recipe of celebration.

P.S. : Do share food sequences in Cinema that you loved in the comments.