The Act of Cooking is One of Caregiving - Krishnendu Ray with Shunali Khullar Shroff and Asma Khan

Shunali Khullar Shroff invites Krishnendu Ray to explore the idea that many Indian men might be raised under the misconception that “cooking is not for someone of superior intellect, especially if male.”

Ray explains that the story of his life has parallels with Asma Khan and “the theme is the same: Bengali academics are lethal!” His trajectory was rooted in political reading, for which he went to the US to pursue a PhD. The first thing that hit him in the alien nation was nostalgia through food, which set off a “chain of thinking”. While he went there to ponder broad academic questions, he was troubled far more by a simpler one: he had grown up over twenty years in India and had never learned to cook. “In spite of my progressive politics,” he laments, “it was an absurd proposition.” And so he went to his advisor to change his topic of research.

“I started looking at immigrants and how they have dealt with the question of loss, and their access to this embodied memory.” Eventually he realised how his work on food was an inquiry into cooking as an act of care and caregiving. Learn all about food and what it means for those of us far from home in this riveting talk with Asma Khan, Krishnendu Ray and Shunali Khullar Shroff.