Punjabi food, its dialectic and drift
By Darshan Singh Maini

THE link between a people, a community, a racial group and its food has been for long a significant subject of study or scrutiny for cultural-sociological anthropologists and theological thinkers, in particular. Much thought, research and erudition have gone into the business of eating and drinking, resulting in some interesting and intriguing observations of a philosophical nature. That this primary biological need of man could lead to large questions of his origin and essence, among other variations, would strike a common reader or person as something extravagant and absurd. But if one were to learn from the research of those in the field that gastronomy and geography, time-spirit and milieu, culinary art and the art or nature of language, anatomy and sexuality, are all part of conditioned paradigms, the simple daily business which takes us to the table or to the kitchen or to the dhaba, and occupies so much of our mind, money and time emerges as a very complex business at bottom. I’m not going into the story of taste, or of food-habits as such, something quite beyond the scope of this piece. In fact, the entire arcane of exotic, fabulous food as well as the lavishly-produced and illustrated books on cookery, wines, beverages etc. are being left to the imagination of the gourmets and connoisseurs of the palate.

What really ignited my interest in this unlikely topic — my culinary needs having always being modest, and now almost ruined, — was a striking chapter entitled "Oysters, Smoked Salmon and Stilton Cheese" in the Fontana series volume on Levi-Strauss by Edmund Leach. Re-reading the book after a lapse of years, I was intrigued by the arguments of the great French anthropologist, what with his culinary "triangles", linguistic "triangles" and other algebraic equations. So, I thought of using, or more appropriately, of adapting his discourse to the requirements of my own culture and situation. In short, to examine the raison d’etre of Punjabi food, its dialectic and drift.

Now we all know that there are as many varieties of cuisines in the world as the number of languages and dialects, fables and myths, and that the food habits and food cultures change distinctly from region to region within the same country, or from ethnic congregates within a particular nation. There is, as they say, God’s plenty, and the human tongue will never be done with the taste; it’s always salivating for the new and the fresh. Such, such, are the pleasures of the palate! And my concern here is with Punjabi food, though with the kind of "globalisation" we are witnessing in nearly all important areas of human interest, the phenomenon has globalised food also in some measure — restricted, of course, to the more affluent and the instantly neo-rich sections of our society. Pizzas, Chinese food and continental delicacies etc are about as familiar to the dal-roti toiling millions as the Grand Canyon or the Niagara Falls! A longing for one’s own food and drink abides wherever one sets up home, in one’s own country or abroad. No wonder, I learnt during a year’s stay at New York University a decade ago that there were over 150 different varieties of restaurants in New York catering to varied immigrant requirements — from the French refinements and sophistication to the Icelandic and African bush-food. In my own neighbourhood alone — "the village" — over a dozen Punjabi restaurants were doing a fairly brisk business, what with the sheek-kabab and naan to tandoori roast chicken and richly-buttered mash-di-dal, makki-di-roti and sarson-da-sag. All this is, of course, a prelude to the dialectic taste and ambience of Punjabi cuisine.

To return, then, to Levi-Strauss’ culinary logic in relation to people’s structure of the mind amidst "universals", we find that the Punjabi food and culture are so organically related, and so deeply rooted in their mores and moorings as to give us a fairly significant clue to Punjabi character — characterised by a certain known and evolved paradigm of traits which, among other things, include grit and hardiness, love of the soil and the poetry of the air and earth, a certain kind of extroversion, wanderlust and daring, a visible show of pride in their prowess, bordering, at times, or wantonness, false hauteur, — and overtopping it all is that joie de vivre which is to be felt, seen and experienced in their homes and festivals, in their expansive human relationships, in their daily business and traffic of life, in their spirit of enterprise and adaptation etc. Also a certain kind of tenderness and warmth imbibed with the mother’s milk, and linked to the Sikh Gurus’ hymns on the magnanimities of the human spirit in action.

What have all these virtues, values, you may ask, to do with the mundane story of eating and drinking? That’s, indeed, "the real story" — the energies which pass on from the blessedness of wheat and corn, of meat and milk to the blood and bone — and, in turn, to the making of a people’s culture, character and spirit. Clearly, we are already beginning to see the contours of a culinary culture overlapping the Punjabi way of life, and illustrating their world-view.

If we were to examine the culinary taxsonomy of India alone, we would easily see why the northern India staple diet is so different from the South Indian, or from the north-eastern — wheat and corn, liquor and lassi, ghee and lentils, milk and butter (mutton and chicken in festive contexts) etc in one case, and the rice-curds, coconut - condiments, chillies and pungent hot herbs, fish and other sea-food, coffee and coconut-milk in the other. Even the modes and styles of eating — from the use of utensils to palm-leaves, from chair table-charpai to the washed floor and chattai — would testify to the making of a people’s mindset. The ingredients, the manner and the medium of cooking then determine your stance and disposition, your values and vision in some ways.

Now, clearly, Punjab’s place in the Indian map as a sentinel for centuries with a history redolent of invasions and arrivals — from the Aryans to the Mughal rulers has not a little to do with the food culture that has almost come to stay. Since physical survival was a primary concern, the food had to be in tune with the requirements of the geography, the soil and the spirit. Hence the emphasis on the ingredients that made up a cuisine of courage, and fortitude, rich in those aspects which helped make the physical and spiritual muscles needed by a frontier people to defend their honour, hearths and homes.

Obviously, over the centuries, a fair amount of the mixing of blood, of clashing cultures produced in the end items of food and the manner of cooking that had aspects of both the native cuisine and the new ethnic-religious groups of invaders, immigrants and settlers. That’s why Punjabi food bears a strong resemblance to the food from the Doaba region, to Kabul and beyond — right up to the Muslim republics of the erstwhile Soviet Union and the Caucasian mountains. This cuisine got homogenised over a long period of time, and became a settled phenomenon in the end. And as I have observed earlier, Punjabi traits of character thus emerged in the process of adjustment, accommodation and evolution. The Sikh saga of heroism for over four centuries helped form the fibres of a great spirit.

Though some small groups settled in Punjab such as the Jains do observe a strict dietary regimen and a culinary culture of taboos, inhibitions and prohibitions, most Punjabis have a much more open and uninhibited attitude in this regard, particularly when we compare it with the ones prevailing in the South and the East. That’s one reason why of all the peoples and ethnic religious congregates in India, the Punjabis have more readily and joyfully introduced several items of western food into their daily rounds of eating and drinking. Even rice-eating and idli-dosa are now no strangers to their palates and plates.

Levi-Strauss in his long and thoughtful comments on the evolution of culinary cultures from the bush to the palace made some revealing comments which in the context of Punjabi food do show up aspects of civilisation, and the mystique of degree and hierarchy which divides the rich from the poor, the aristocracy from the plebians. And not only the food or the drink itself, but its mode of cooking determines the difference. "Roasting and smoking", he observes, "are natural processes whereas boiling is a cultural process, but as to end-products, smoked food belongs to culture but roast and boiled food to Nature." Though the economy of roasting is that of waste and destruction (and roasting is at once primitive and tribal), yet it has evolved as a high mark of aristocratic tables. Boiling, on the other hand, preserves the essence of the ingredients in question — rice, meal or vegetables or lentils, and is associated with more democratic and plebian corporate consciousness.

The same is true of the business or art of drinking. All those liquors that are brewed (tea, beer etc.) are essentially plebian, whereas those distilled (whisky, gin) carry the distinction of aristocratic cultures. Of course, with the changing modern patterns of living and travelling, the distinctions do tend to get blurred, but even today the possession of single-malt Scotch Whisky, matured in Vats for years and French period wines in the cellars of the royalty and the aristocracy would proclaim the taste — and the place and the purse. Your wines and cognac or brandy tell your station in life, your pedigree ad your emblem of house and birth!

The Punjabis in general are known to be great tipplers and boozers and much of their festive folklore and ribald quips are built round the theme of country-drink, a liquor often raw and sharp and heady in effect. It’s of course, a typical plebian drink prepared from the molasses and other aromatic ingredients, and consumed in huge quantities. That’s how the thekas bring in hefty revenues to the state treasury, and graft money in generous measure to the tribe of politicians, bureaucrats and middlemen. And it’s this "democratic" drink that continues to season the Punjabi wit and cuisine.

No wonder, even the five-Star gourmets in New Delhi and in other big cities, tend, at times, to drive out of town to the road-side dhabas. The Punjabi nostalgia for tandoori roti and chicken, for crackling ghee-tarka, kali dal and sizzling rich alu-prathas etc. abides amidst their taste for inter-continental dishes and drinks.