Nostalgic frames of ‘ghar ka khana’

Express News Service

As a student of literature, some of my earliest favourite memories came from craftily laid out spreads in Victorian and French homes. Take the evocative madeleine dipped in tea that Marcel Proust describes in Swann’s Way. While these spongy, cake-like cookies have been around since the 18th Century, it was Proust who immortalised them through his works. Years later, what they gave me were memories of a home spread—one that would last forever.

In my first year at Delhi University, my parents gifted me a camera. What I realised soon after in my earliest days spent exploring the city is that most of my photographs were of food—restaurants I’d explore, the atta-laden hands of my naani as she made pooris at home, the street vendor flipping rumali rotis into the air and catching them with perfection, too. Years later, it struck me that this is what I specialised at—capturing what we eat every day.

Over the years, these are the photographs that have left me with some of the fondest memories. It is this added zing to everyday moments that is a shiny trend across social platforms today.  Take Delhi duo Kanika and Jatin’s Instagram page 

Dawat ’e Hind (@dawatehind) for instance. While their approach to food is simple, they evoke nostalgia at every humble turn of the plate, and their stories tug at your heart. These photographs make you look at things you’ve been eating or drinking since childhood with a closer lens, and offer a new meaning to the human memories that such things have brought for us. For instance, their photographs of the humble kaanji, a fermented probiotic drink made in North India as the season shifts from winters to spring, tells you a story that our urban lives have nearly forgotten. The duo captures the making of kaanji through the hands of their mother who makes this drink. Just like that, the kaanji is no longer about just the drink itself—it is about the person making it, their touch, and all the memories that we associate with the mothers of our families.

Photographer Saumya Gupta—her Instagram page is ‘Poems on my palms’ (@poemsonmypalms)—has a similar flair as well. In one of her narrations on the importance of tadka [tempering] in Indian dals, and the way she learnt new techniques when she got married into a Rajasthani family, she weaves the story not just through a simple photograph with a steaming hot pot of dal, but leaves fodder for thought on how cross-culture and community confluences leave deep marks on us and our personalities. 

Due credit for this has to go to the social media platform Instagram, and the way it changed how we look at images. In ways, it normalised a hobby for us to photograph what we eat, and no longer make it appear peculiar. It gave me the sense of a community, and I found stories and solace in such food stories. They weren’t mere food photographs, and yet, they were the best food photograph examples that one could give.

Over the past five years, the aesthetic ‘home food photograph’ has defined the space, rather than heavily-stylised spreads. After all, what we eat is very often a personal emotion that we don’t share enough of.
You see, the thing about shooting food is that it should be simple and non-fussy, and let you connect with the warmth and comfort of the person narrating their stories to you. It is no longer a niche work of art, but is one where you’d find stories that stay with you forever—just like Proust’s madeleines.

Vernika Awal
is a food writer who is known for her research-based articles through her blog ‘Delectable Reveries’