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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
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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.