Smells and flavours in the diaspora
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Buettner suggests a deep dichotomy between the enjoyment of South Asian-owned establishments, food, and cultural experience and the disgust white patrons cited at "the smell of curry" within their cities (151). They expressed a deep resentment about this hyperbolised smell; Desai describes this aversion as going as far as white English workers refusing to work alongside Pakistani and Indian workers because they "could not bear the smell of garlic" (152). Smell is a recurrent motif in racist dialogues, whether it be in neighbourhoods, workplaces or in schools. It underscores the visceral nature of racial prejudice, manifesting through an embodied response that associates certain sensory experiences, like smell, with racialised 'otherness'. This fixation on smell not only dehumanises South Asian communities but also functions as a means of social exclusion, marking their presence as invasive or undesirable within white-dominated spaces.
Obviously, the white British population viewed immigrants conditionally. By the 1980s, curry and by proxy certain South Asian food establishments were becoming tolerated and enjoyed. Restaurants that originally catered almost exclusively for Asians began witnessing a diversifying clientele (153). Despite this, the white customers benefitting from the food they were consuming actively separate(d) the art from the artist. This selective acceptance reduced South Asian contributions to consumable products and stripped them of cultural or personal significance. Within the boundaries of a restaurant, one can permit the immigrant to live but as soon as they overstep a threshold, and exist in a quotidian manner, they are as intruders disrupting the fabric of 'normal' white British life. This conditional acceptance keeps communities in a controlled, commercialised space, where their presence is tolerated only when it aligns with consumer desires and remains separate from broader British society.
Doing these readings this week has brought a lot of emotion up. Jewish food is incredibly ingrained in our culture, with an interesting difference to a lot of the comparisons made in the texts for Monday. The idea that something is authentic to 'back home' (Mannur) is integral in some ways to a lot of diasporic cooking. This in part differs from my culture, where there is and isn't a 'back home' to compare to. For Jewish communities, especially those who have been part of a long history of migration, "authenticity" in food isn’t necessarily tied to one single geographic place but to the preservation of flavours and practices across shifting homes. Dishes have evolved to reflect new environments while holding onto symbols of identity, sometimes blending with local traditions and sometimes standing in contrast. This fluidity in Jewish cooking highlights the complexities of diasporic identity: the food is always both rooted in memory and reshaped by the present, never pointing to a single 'homeland' but to a collective sense of belonging across many places.