Spices, Memories, and Belonging

[ilia_mehrbakhsh]

Buettener draws attention to the role of ethnic cuisine in multiculturalism, as well as in the development of British perspectives on the ethnic cultures as it relates to food.

Buettner points out David parker’s “celebratory multiculturalism,” where multiculturalism “refers to a succession of conscious efforts to make sense of, and manage, ethnically diverse communities at the local and national levels.” The strategy to combat racism and to implement multiculturalism became teaching about other cultures and preaching tolerance which arguably did little to actually confront racial prejudice. Restaurants made strategic choices to build a customer base among a white population to cater to their taste. Originally catered to Britons who had once lived in the subcontinent, South Asian restaurant started rising in popularity for other Britons due to lower prices, and the “adventure of trying an ‘exotic’ cuisine…”

Indian restaurants in the 1920s and 1930s, mostly catered to Indians, but also Britons who were former civil servants in British India. These restaurants provided the exotic, oriental atmosphere the ex-colonials craved, and were even called ‘sahib’ by the waiters. These restaurants continued to be patronized into the 1950s and the 1960s, but they were mostly for the colonials.

Food is a reference back to what once was. Food is a form of reliving memories, reliving the senses, the scents, the traditions that once shaped everyday lives of immigrants in their countries of origin. Never being able to reinstate what once was, food is that reference and food is that point of unity, togetherness, and finding solace in the search of home away from home. This search is what I think links food to migrant melancholia; given the nature of melancholia being a grieving process where the melancholic cannot simply grieve and move on, food becomes that factor the persists, resides, and remains to try to heal and address the greiving process, but also prolong it by never allowing th melancholic to let go of the loss.