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Thursday, July 23, 2020

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com MICHIGAN IN COLOR

A way to understand: banana leaves

A few weeks ago, I was intro-

duced to “Ugly Delicious,” a Netf-
lix TV series hosted by American 
restaurateur, David Chang. In the 
series, Chang follows the history, 
culture and cooking which goes 
into dishes across the world, rang-
ing from shrimp and crawfish, to 
fried rice to steak. As a huge fan 
of travel-food shows, like “Antho-
ny Bourdain: No Reservations,” I 
envy people like Chang’s ability to 
explore cultures, new regions and 
new types of people through the 
cuisine they eat, and to share this 
with wider, sometimes more cul-
turally isolated audiences. 

Food is a core pillar of my fam-

ily and my identity. Ever since I 
was young, I was taught to cherish 
the art of eating, cooking and the 
beauty in sharing the incredible 
feelings emitted by said food with 
those around you. Food has always 
been more than nourishment for 
me — it’s a hobby, a way I build 
relationships and a passport into 
new perspectives and cultures. 
So as I watched Chang’s series, I 
began to appreciate the intricacies 
and calculations behind seemingly 
simple foods, like pizza or fried 
rice, and the fondness, history and 
attachment tied to larger cultural 
cuisines I’ve never explored before.

In Season 2, Episode 2, “Don’t 

Call it Curry,” Chang explores the 
roots of Indian cuisine, primar-

SUNITHA PALAT

MiC Staff Writer

Read more at michigandaily.com

The erosion of the white monolith

Read more at michigandaily.com

 Design by Hibah Chughtai

The compounding evidence of 

Euro-American 
crimes 
against 

Brown and Black populations is 
slowly eroding the white monolith, 
revealing the structure on which 
said monolith was formed — a 
structure of hatred, oppression, 
subjication, genocide and theft 
on all accounts. So why is it pre-
sumed people must adhere to the 
same laws and regulations which 
made the looting of Black and 
Brown lives and identities legal? 
This direct irony, in its correlation 
to present day political looting, is 
what I aim to illuminate. 

With the birth of the nation 

we see the beginning of the white 
struggle which was remedied by 
the intellectual property of Native 

ANA MARÍA SÁNCHEZ-CASTILLO

MiC Staff Writer

Americans. After white America 
learned to survive on Native land, 
they began using tactics to sys-
tematically dehumanize Black and 
Brown populations. The Indian 
Removal Act of 1830 stands as a 
watershed moment in history by 
which Native populations were 
forced off their ancestral lands and 
forced into lands that were slowly 
encroached upon as well. This can 
be observed as the impetus for the 
systemic removal of Natives from 
American nationhood — rational-
izing their subjugation and geno-
cide to the major population. In 
this sense, colonial America can be 
viewed as hollowing out the shell 
of the Native American nation. 
All while creating laws that legal-
ized injustices and crimes against 
humanity. What is seen now in 
Native America are the remnants 

 Design by Hibah Chughtai

ily due to the American public’s 
general unfamiliarity with it. He 
admits he’s never made Indian food 
at home and is quite complexed by 
it. Why? Chang has no explana-
tion. But he goes on to admit there 
is some barrier Indian food has yet 
to break within the United States. 
It hasn’t fully become mainstream; 
you don’t see many quick, mod-
ern Indian chains, hear common 
discussions of Indian recipes in 
food blogs and papers, nor is there 
an understanding by the average 
American of what Indian food is. 
The most frustrating aspect of 
Indian cuisine in America is the 
lack of representation of all Indian 
cuisine across the entire nation.

Padma Lakshmi (host of “Top 

Chef,” and a guest of the episode) 
struck a chord with me, by noting 
the way Indian food is presented in 

America is as if you were to group 
Europe into one big country, and 
refer to Italian, French, Spanish 
cuisine all as “European.” India 
is diverse, scattered and regional-
ized. Each state has its own lan-
guage, variations in culture and 
slight differences in religion and 
cuisines. The Indian food most 
typically represented in America 
— butter chicken, chicken tandoori 
— belongs to a single Indian state, 
Punjab. And extending from here, 
other popular foods such as naan, 
samosas, paneer, korma, belong 
to North Indian cuisine. India is a 
country with over a billion people, 
so flavors are infinite. 

My family is from Kerala, one of 

the most southern Indian states. 
Here, cuisine greatly varies from 
the Northern style and is much less 
represented in American dining. 

There is more of a stew-like, drier 
presentation featuring curries and 
a variety of vegetables. Other than 
these curries (and many others), 
there are tasty fried foods like idli, 
vadas, pappadams and dosa. Dosas, 
being the most popular in my opin-
ion, are a staple of Southern Indian 
households. They are often likened 
to be the “Indian crepe” and have 
gained slight popularity in larger 
cities and smaller pop-up shops. 

But even within South India, and 

Kerala, there are variations. While 
I adore and crave many dishes from 
Kerala, which resemble greater 
South Indian cooking, when think-
ing about the art of eating from my 
homeland, I think of banana leaves. 
Used often for weddings, larger 
religious events and special occa-
sions, banana leaves are represen-
tative of a savvy, traditional and 

nostalgic medium to eat food — it’s 
the world’s natural plate. The large, 
thick, light green leaf is inexhaust-
ible and crisp, and was a perfect 
way in the past and present to serve 
food. Keeping the tip of the leaf on 
the right side, and the larger side on 
the right, small subtleties mark the 
“correct” way to eat from a banana 
leaf. But first, food is served. 

When thinking about banana 

leaves, I think about sadhyas, 
which essentially means “feast” in 
Malayalam. These banquet type 
lunches are common for weddings, 
important birthdays, and religious 
celebrations — they are usually 
quite a production. Picture a large, 
open-space room with roughly 
one to two hundred guests sitting 
at long wooden tables side by side 
with banana leaves placed in front 
of them. Caterers come out in this 
synchronized, almost rehearsed 
movement — they know what to do, 
they’ve done this for sadhyas over 
and over. In tubs, they go down the 
lines of tables and serve very small 
portions of various foods onto the 
banana leaves one by one. Some-
times they ask if you want the serv-
ing or not, but before you can even 
answer, the serving is placed in a 
little circle on your leaf, and the 
offererer has passed onto the next 
guest.

First comes pickle. There are 

two types of pickle that may come 
— one, a raw mango pickle...

of the genocidal movement that 
often goes unexplored and ignored. 

Due to their culture being rooted 

in collectivism rather than indi-
vidualism — as is seen in Western 
societies — I stand in my belief that 
Native Americans, having the same 
ability as white Americans, would 

not have committed such horrific 
crimes to humankind, but I digress. 

The magnitude of white Ameri-

ca’s crimes against humanity have 
far exceeded affordability — the 
petty theft involved in looting is 
a nominal cost to pay. Today, the 
modern day movement has the 

capacity to illuminate the existence 
of a power hierarchy that places the 
fruits of capitalism above the lives 
of the marginalized fractions of 
society.

