Distant clutterings from the kitchen echo through our walls as Mama begins the weekly meal prep for the family. It’s a usual Sunday night sensory onslaught: freshly washed leafy greens from the garden stacked high in colanders beside the sink, potatoes and beans in the pressure cooker lightly hissing away, and on top of the counter, a stainless steel plate of ngari and dried ghost chillies releasing a pungent aroma that stings our noses. On the stove, another pot simmers away, bubbling with a chicken curry for me and my sisters who usually wince at the piquant smells of Manipuri cooking, burying our noses under our collars.
Manipur is one of India’s seven ‘sister states’ in the Northeast; it is geographically quite isolated from mainland India, only narrowly connected by a strip of land called the Siliguri Corridor or Chicken’s Neck. Bounded by neighbouring countries of Nepal, Myanmar, China and Bangladesh, the region exists at a crossroad of South, South-East and East Asian influences. As a former princely state during the British Raj, Manipur was described as the ‘Switzerland of India’ by the then Viceroy of India, Lord Irwin. Even its name which means ‘Land of Jewels’ reckons the same timeless beauty its valleys, hills and lakes embody. Its people, language and cuisines are a reflection of India’s vast ethnic diversity that many are ignorant towards.
It should be noted that there are many ethnic groups in Manipur but the Meiteis are the largest and most dominant group and which my family belongs to. Growing up in Australia, I often had to defend my Indian identity as people in disbelief would typically retort “What? I thought you were like Chinese or something” towards my racial ambiguity. And it wouldn’t help my defence when (1) I had forgotten how to speak Hindi and (2) Manipuri culture was so distinct from what most people associated Indian culture with.
As an agrarian state, its culinary traditions are unique and influenced by its valleys and lakes. A typical Meitei meal consists of a mound of chak (rice) alongside several side dishes of lots of vegetables, fish and chillies that are either steamed, boiled, mashed or fermented. Fish in particular is a quintessential staple in Manipuri cuisines, largely due to its abundance from surrounding lakes. In order to preserve the produce for the dry season and continue its consumption throughout the year, traditional methods of fermentation, salting, drying and smoking were developed. A popular fermented fish product, ngari, claimed by my Papa as something that lasts forever, is the backbone ingredient of most Manipuri dishes — it’s boiled in kangshoi (a vegetable stew) for flavour, mashed with boiled vegetables and chillies to make eromba, and roasted and put in singju (a type of salad). It’s stinky but as Mama says, ‘delicious and essential’. Other staples include hawaijar (fermented soybeans) which is quite similar to the Japanese natto and a suitable replacement of ngari for vegetarians, and soibum (fermented bamboo shoot), another important ingredient. These staples infuse Meitei kitchens with a rich, savoury aroma and adds a necessary depth of umami flavour to every dish.
Its appreciation, however, is quiet and nestled to the Manipuri community as its pungent smells and foreignness is frequently met with disdain outside the thresholds of our region. Northeastern people migrating to mainland India for better education and work opportunities is highly common, however, just as common is the discrimination and marginalisation they face particularly for the ‘non-Indianness’ of their physical appearances and culinary traditions. Our features seamlessly align with one’s imagination of an East Asian person and as a result, mainstream India subjects us to an overwhelming othering experience within our very own country.
In 2014, Nido Taniam, a 20-year-old student from the northeast state of Arunachal Pradesh, was brutally attacked and murdered in Delhi for his East Asian appearance which highlighted the severity of casual racism Northeast migrants especially in India’s metropolitan cities, continuously experience. Moreover, amid the COVID-19 pandemic, there were increased acts of xenophobia that exacerbated the existing discrimination, violence, and othering. Northeast Indians were blamed for bringing and spreading the virus with several accounts of them being spat on by random bike riders. Other manifestations of racial otherings can be seen in how authorities respond to this climate: in 2007, the Delhi Police published a booklet titled Security Tips for Northeast Students/Visitors in Delhi which advised to avoid cooking fermented foods in their homes so neighbours and landlords wouldn’t get upset at unfamiliar smells. Regardless of any interpretation of good intentions, such an issue of law and order perpetuates beliefs of superiority and inferiority of racial castes and cultures. By a superior upper caste authoritarian power condoning fermented foods as a civic nuisance to protect the social order further devalues the northeast Indian heritage and identity.
The human sense of smell plays a significant role in food preparation and cooking — olfactory food cues subconsciously trigger specific appetites and subsequent food intakes. In a wider global context however, we often negatively categorise food based on unfamiliar odours, quickly labelling it as ‘smelly’ or ‘stinky’. The reality is, such perceptions are reinforced by a dominant system of dietary order and taste — a group at the top of the sociocultural hierarchy would not believe the food that they consumed was ‘stinky’ instead, the consumption of ‘stinky’ food is heavily racialized as ‘other’. Indian cuisines, from all regions, have strong smells from ingredients like masala, however, conflicts of ‘smelly’ foods are pinned on minority groups like Northeast migrants. The alienation of the northeast is clear and pervasive through the systems of culture in mainland India.
In truth, our food preferences, more times than not, are shaped by deeper, underlying biases rooted in some hierarchical view of cuisines, with our own cuisine at the top. But who are we to dictate what food is acceptable and not especially when one’s tastes are generally beyond their control instead, being influenced by their own cultural and environmental contexts? Diversity will forever be incomplete, if we cannot see beyond our comfortability to respect and foster appreciation of different food cultures.
The pressure cooker lets out a high-pitched whistle, its white steam rising. Mama transfers the potato and beans in a large stainless steel bowl and with the ngari and dried chillies begins to mash everything with the end of a stainless steel cup. The leafy greens, now boiled in the kangshoi, were poured on our plates of chak.
She beckons us for dinner.
The once pungent smell had subsided, now an earthy, comforting aroma hugs the dining table. I carry fragments of my Manipuri identity in broken language and food. Sometimes I find myself craving the food I used to block my nose to — every bite a reconciliation of my heritage. The soupy rice of kangshoi with the side of the spicy tangy eromba envelops my taste buds as I begin to finally identify with that ‘smell’.
