A Cookbook that Refuses to Comfort: Reading 'Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada'

There's something deeply intimate about reading a book in fragments with someone whose lived experience breathes between its lines. My partner, who comes from a Dalit background, would pause mid-sentence as we worked through Shahu Patole's Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada together, his face shifting between recognition and discomfort. "This is exactly what my grandmother used to say," he'd murmur, or "We still do this, but differently now." The book became a mirror—sometimes affirming, sometimes alienating, always revelatory.

Originally published in Marathi as Anna He Apoorna Brahma in 2015, Patole's work arrives in English translation as something far more complex than a cookbook. It's part memoir, part manifesto, part archaeological dig into the buried culinary histories of Maharashtra's Marathwada region. But experiencing it through the lens of contemporary Dalit identity—watching my partner navigate between the world Patole describes and the one he inhabits—reveals layers of meaning that pure academic analysis might miss.

The book forces uncomfortable questions not just about Indian cuisine's global image, but about how communities negotiate tradition, mobility, and belonging through food. As we discovered over countless evening conversations, spanning from tribal food traditions in Odisha's hinterlands to the cultural warfare being waged over what constitutes "authentic" Indian cuisine, Patole's work sits at the intersection of memory and aspiration, survival and choice.

The Geography of Hunger and Abundance

Our first reading session began with Patole's opening declaration, "In every village in rural India, there are two villages, the main one and the one on its outskirts. This book talks about the food practices of the latter". My partner nodded slowly. "That's still true," he said. "Even in cities now, there are two cities. The foods don't cross over."

What struck us both was how Patole refuses to romanticise this separation. The book's early chapters detail the rigid hierarchies that existed even within Dalit communities: "Chambhar and Dhor did not consume 'forbidden' meat. Also, they observed untouchability against the other two castes, Mahar and Mang". This wasn't simply about food preferences; it was about how oppression creates its internal stratifications, how the marginalised learn to marginalise others as a survival strategy.

The political dimensions of this segregation became clearer as we discussed our own experiences. My partner, now comfortable in middle-class spaces, rarely eats meat—not out of religious conviction, but due to a complex negotiation of identity, health consciousness, and social positioning. Yet during major cultural celebrations in his family, meat remains central. "It's not about the meat itself," he explained. "It's about who we are when we're together, when we're not performing for anyone else."

Patole captures this tension beautifully when he notes, "We knew the taste of their food because they would give us their leftovers, but they never knew the taste of our food because of untouchability and disgust". The asymmetry of culinary knowledge reflects broader power dynamics—upper castes could remain ignorant of Dalit foodways, whilst Dalits necessarily learned to navigate multiple culinary worlds.

Recipes as Resistance, Tradition as Trap

The recipes themselves read like survival manuals. Early entries include "congealed blood and salt (lakuti), salt if you have it; epiglottis (fashi) with salt, turmeric and ginger-garlic (optional)". Reading these aloud felt transgressive, even in the privacy of our sitting room. My partner winced at some descriptions—not from disgust, but from the weight of recognition.

"My mother would never cook these things now," he said. "But I remember my grandmother talking about them." This generational shift—from necessity to choice, from survival to selection—runs throughout contemporary Dalit experience. The recipes Patole documents represent both ancestral wisdom and ancestral trauma, techniques born from deprivation that some families have deliberately left behind.

What fascinated us was the constant refrain throughout the recipes, "if you have it." This phrase appears again and again, gesturing towards what sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would call "a taste of necessity over a taste of abundance". But we began to see this not as a limitation but as a philosophical approach to cooking—one that privileges adaptability over authenticity, resourcefulness over rigid adherence to tradition.

The book reveals how Dalit communities developed the "ghal pani aan kar kalchyavani" method—"add water and let them stay, that's how you made it yesterday". This approach to hospitality, born from scarcity, creates space for the unexpected guest, the unplanned meal, the moment of connection. It's a cuisine of flexibility, designed to accommodate rather than exclude.

The Measurement of Memory

One evening, as we read Patole's section on traditional measurements, my partner suddenly laughed. "My mother still does this," he said. The book describes how women measure "by nakbhar (about the size of a fingernail), chimtibhar (a pinch), a cupped palm, a fistful, two handfuls"—a system of precision that exists entirely outside cookbook culture.

This prompted longer conversations about embodied knowledge versus textual knowledge, about how culinary traditions survive through practice rather than documentation. We discussed how tribal communities in Odisha, where I'd travelled extensively, face similar challenges of representation. Their sophisticated use of indigenous ingredients, their seasonal cooking practices, their sustainable food systems—all dismissed as "primitive" by urban food cultures that privilege written recipes over generational wisdom.

The gendered dimensions of this knowledge became apparent as we progressed through the book. Patole notes that "measurement at the heart of cooking techniques is in fact an allegory for female bodies that feed others". The recipes exist in women's hands, in their intuitive understanding of texture and timing, in their ability to transform whatever is available into sustenance.

My partner reflected on how his mother's cooking had evolved over the decades—from village-style preparations to more urban, health-conscious approaches, but always retaining that fundamental flexibility, that ability to create abundance from scarcity. "She never follows recipes," he said. "She just knows."

Food Wars and Cultural Authenticity

Perhaps the most relevant section for our contemporary moment deals with Patole's critique of food media and cultural representation. He observes how "food blogs, Facebook groups, Instagram stories and YouTube channels are constantly introducing India's rich, nourishing and diverse food culture to the world" whilst systematically excluding Dalit foodways from this narrative.

This resonated deeply with our ongoing conversations about food politics. We'd discussed how the increasing puritanism around food—the push towards vegetarianism as "authentic" Indian culture, the demonisation of meat-eating communities, the sanitisation of Indian cuisine for global consumption—represents a form of cultural violence. Patole's work exposes how this violence operates: through inclusion and exclusion, through the power to define what counts as "real" Indian food.

The book reveals that "about two-thirds of the recipes in The Dalit Kitchens are of vegetables, dals, breads, and foraged (or market) greens", challenging simplistic narratives about Dalit cuisine being solely about meat consumption. This complexity mirrors my partner's experience—someone who grew up with meat as culturally significant but not daily, who learned to navigate multiple food worlds, who carries the memory of resourceful cooking whilst living in a world of abundant choice.

What Dalit Kitchens of Marathwada offers, ultimately, is not comfort but clarity. It's a book that refuses to let readers settle into easy assumptions about Indian cuisine, about tradition, about what constitutes authentic cultural practice. Reading it together, we found ourselves confronting not just historical injustices but present-day negotiations—how identity gets constructed through food choices, how communities balance preservation with transformation, how individuals navigate between inherited traditions and chosen lifestyles.

Patole has created something unprecedented: a cookbook that functions as social critique, a memoir that serves as historical document, a collection of recipes that doubles as a political manifesto. It's uncomfortable, essential reading that expands our understanding of what Indian cuisine can be when it includes voices that have been systematically silenced.