Forthcoming Monograph

Readers of this blog, I finally have a forthcoming sole-authored monograph after almost a decade of starting this blog. It is titled, The Tastes and Politics of Inter-Cultural Food in Australia, and will be published by Rowman and Littlefield International in early 2018.

Use this link to pre-order the book.

Hunting...for Turkish Bread

Image: Author's own, taken in Bushwick (Brooklyn) in May 2016

It is a hot day in Sydney
and I am swimming in
literature and gentrification.

I read A Little Life
about twenty-something artists, slumming it in an apartment in Manhattan.

And picture novelist Hari Kunzru
in East London, not playing at authenticity
yet partial to nice raclette.

Then I recall summer conversations
with a Sydney undertone, discussing
renovations and rentals.

Debating first homes and investments
in the same breath as veganism
and climate change, over piccolos.

I go hunting for bread for a Marrickville
picnic, and decide it has to be Turkish
preferably not store-bought.

In the Country of Crabb and Kebab

Unless you were living under a proverbial rock called commercial television in Australia these past few months, you are probably aware of the hullabaloo surrounding an episode of ABC's Kitchen Cabinet where journalist Annabel Crabb interviewed former immigration minister Scott Morrison. While this infamous televised encounter is no longer on iView, be assured that 'ScoMosas' (or Morrison's version of Sri Lankan samosas) has not only entered popular media lexicon in Australia, but has even inspired the ire of critical race theorists and independent media commentators.

Despite having a girl crush on Crabb's nifty desserts, 50s frocks, and penchant for witty political columns, I have to agree that the scorn is mostly well-deserved. While some are wary of the extreme lifestylisation of journalism, especially on a public broadcaster, this can remain ethical and balanced in the right hands. With the ScoMo episode, however, Crabb failed to scrutinise the former minister's repugnant decision to turn back Sri Lanka asylum seeker boats, especially in the context of the food he was cooking and serving her on the show. It was almost as though leftie intellectuals and Sri Lankan-Australians would be appeased by the kind gesture of ScoMo preparing curry and samosas, and stretching their imaginations to recognise these exotic culinary items as standing in for real brown people. Look hither, SBS executives and food writers - 'Making the Other' is a notch better than 'Eating the Other', especially when Annabel Crabb approves.

I won't be surprised if an ironic ScoMosa turns up in hipsterville Australia in the next month or so. For the rest of the nation though, Crabb's lack of scrutiny is not out of step with the understanding of the role of 'ethnic food' in establishing a multicultural society. In their work on food multiculturalism in Australia, Rick Flowers and Elaine Swan argue, 'There is a long history in Australia of concerted efforts to construct food as a medium through which people learn about other cultures and as a sign, when they eat diverse cultural foods, that their cities and regions are more tolerant of difference' (2012). These signs work at the level of official multiculturalism policy and pedagogy, as well as in everyday banal intercultural encounters. Given this, my quip is that we ought to see much more of the latter to disturb our middle class assumptions about multicultural food narratives as always, already triumphalist and engaged.

A Vietnamese-owned grocery store in Marrickville, NSW which is a site of many banal intercultural encounters

In the prelude to the summer holidays, SBS screened a three-part series called Kebab Kings that epitomises the various dimensions of what these everyday intercultural encounters over food can be. While the documentary was marketed as 'a bite of multicultural Australia', the twitter conversation is indicative of a wide-ranging audience that tuned in for the drunken conversations, and not just the incidental social commentary. The series also inspired its own kebab shop-specific hashtag, #kebabble, which continues to draw feedback on the show, and the featured shop-owners whose ethnicity and religion are a point of interest, yet not fetishised.

One of my favourite 'scenes' is when a Muslim worker at the Collingwood store describes the music of the Quran to his British customer. The latter is unfazed and compares his to genres he is familiar with. This real encounter did not give me the sort of warm fuzzy feelings typical of the 'aid an African child to feel good' genre, or the tearjerking invoked by wretched stories of war and conflict in 'other' places. I am not suggesting that these stories don't need to be told, but rather that they are not the only way of representing and encountering people who happen to hail from non-white cultures. With all its flaws, gathering around a kitchen table, whether in a television studio, a suburban house, or a kebab shop, gives us a pathway that we can reflexively employ to share stories. We must, however, try and do so with the understanding that there are narratives and feelings we can readily relate to, others we may habituate to, and still others that we will never fully comprehend or experience. Anyone up for dissing a ScoMosa at OzTurk this Saturday?

Coconuts and Bananas: Cosmopolitan or Deluded?

On Australia Day (which also happens to be India's Republic Day), I interviewed my friend, the maverick writer and radio presenter Sunil Badami for the cosmopolitanism project. He walked me through the main streets of the western Sydney suburb of Merrylands, where he narrated many a tale of growing up as a 'westie'. Sunil now lives in the hip inner western suburb of Rozelle with his wife and two daughters, and refers to himself as a 'coconut'. 'I'm brown on the outside, and white on the inside', he tells me, and adds that people's expectations notwithstanding, he cannot claim to take on any ethnicity-specifc speaking position.

As a resident of Sydney's inner west myself, I have often pondered over what makes me reluctant to move to the west, where the vast majority of those who share my ethnic descent live. I visit on a regular basis for the odd cultural festival, and to meet family and friends, but perhaps my own coconut-ness prevents me from looking at plots of land there, or spending a leisurely Sunday evening eating chaat in Harris Park and commenting on the outfits and general demeanour of fellow 'desis'.

 This sense of ethnicity-defined perception not matching everyday reality is also evident in the character of Simon Chan (played by Lawrence Leung), the artist son of a Vietnamese migrant shop owner who returns to the western Sydney suburb of Cabramatta in the new ABC2 series, 'Maximum Choppage'. While Simon is expected by his mother and the local Vietnamese community to be a warrior who will defend them against local thugs, all he wants to do is paint in peace. A scene that particularly struck me in the first episode was when Simon's mother knocks on his bedroom door, and he hastens to hide the canvas he is working on in his wardrobe. It made me wonder if this kind of 'closeting' of personal preferences and talents, often demanded by the older generation, the migrant community, and the wider society, makes one believe that one is not being Vietnamese enough, and hence being too white.

In a similar vein, the famous Chinese-Australian photographer William Yang speaks in his new film 'Bloodlinks', about growing up in an era that favoured assimilation, and consequently referring to himself as a 'banana' (that is, yellow on the outside and white on the inside). As an adult, Yang endeavoured to learn more about his Chinese heritage by studying the philosophy of Taoism, and withstood friends' jokes that he was a 'born again Chinese'. His story of moving from North Queensland to Brisbane, and finally finding 'his tribe' in Sydney was gripping and one I can somewhat relate to.

Still, I continue to feel that we are missing a nuance or two in referring to ourselves as coconuts and bananas. These names make for great satire, and even better, relatable storytelling. But perhaps the harder task is to realise that not everyone who lives in the inner city is white, and not all practices and lifestyles that revolve around caffeine consumption and social interaction around milk crates, sipping cider in a dingy bar while listening to an undiscovered band, and browsing through the contents of any shop that announces itself as retro or vintage are non-ethnic. I am not sure we have the vocabulary yet to talk about the vagabonds amongst us who take the road less travelled, and have to figure out whether polka dots and pearls look good on coconuts and bananas. 

Becoming Cosmopolitan - The Citizenship Ceremony for the 21st Century?

On the 29th of October 2014, no country was led into Tagore's 'Heaven of Freedom', but I did become a naturalised citizen of Australia. While desiring of this piece of paper for largely pragmatic reasons, I was also acutely aware of what my citizenship certificate and subsequently-granted passport meant in terms of my collusion in the dispossession of Aboriginal land. As a largely symbolic gesture, I decided to wear a scarf on my right wrist that had been designed by an Indigenous artist, and to later pose for a photo in front of the Aboriginal flag rather than the Southern Cross. I told myself that these black armbands were all I could manage under the circumstances, and hoped that this was an opportunity to ally with old and new Australians who continue to re-define Australian-ness and hold our political representatives to account in regards to our participation in the global civil society.

Photo Credit: Owen Leong

However, a few months on, in the wake of globally significant events such as the Sydney siege, the Peshawar school shootings, the Air Asia tragedy and the Charlie Hedbo attack, my questions regarding whether a cosmopolitan consciousness can co-exist with a locally-rooted identity (often understood through the lens of ethnicity or religion) have re-surfaced. During this time, I have also been tentatively putting together a new proposal for a sole-authored monograph on the subject of cosmopolitanism. In the course of reading philosophical, sociological, cultural studies and inter-disciplinary takes on the matter, I have realised that a sense of civic consciousness and being empathetic towards those different from us on account of colour or creed is in fact rooted in one's own personal histories and emotional geographies.

The generic association of cosmopolitanism in the popular imaginary with a kind of class privilege that bestows intellectual and aesthetic openness to other cultures does not tell the whole story. Then there those researchers who have argued for the existence of a kind of 'vernacular cosmopolitism' than may originate, for instance, in the not-so-privileged playground of a primary school in Western Sydney with kids from varied ethnic descents sharing the contents of their lunch boxes. This, in my view, is an important counter-henegmonic story to tell, but is again only part of the picture. I am interested in what happens to these children when they leave the western suburbs to go to a university closer to the city centre, and often share houses in locations such as the inner west of Sydney that are more readily associated with cosmopolitanism. Does this mean that we have those hailing from non-Anglo and working class backgrounds added to the pot of a relatively educated inner city mix? If so, how does this change the practice of being cosmopolitan and the spaces where it is practiced? Also, how do spatial and temporal movements (and the changes in dominant cultural phenomena that they entail) impact individual and collective affinities and cosmopolitan practices?

It is no secret that my own trajectory of being an international student in Australia from 2003 to 2010, a 'temporary' worker moving half-way across the continent for academic work in 2011, a permanent resident gaining a foothold in yet another new city in 2013, and then a citizen of late have impacted my own cultural and political association with the notion of cosmopolitanism. In previous years, I have more readily associated, both in my work and in my personal life, with the idea of being 'diasporic'. However, I now find that my points of cultural reference and emotional attachment are much more dispersed than implied by the term diaspora. These references and attachments don't just belong to India, where I was born and went to school, or to Adelaide, where I spent a formative chunk of my young adult life. In fact, they are both more specific and more widespread that those place names indicate. Growing up in the state of Jammu and Kashmir in India meant an early initiation to ethnic strife and its impact on innocent people, while starting university in Adelaide the same year as the beginning of the Iraq invasion felt like a preordained beginning to the overarching themes and questions of my academic and creative routes thus far.

Similarly, I have come across many an international student turned 'skilled migrant', first-generation migrant turned returnee, second generation migrant turned expatriate in a third country, Indigenous Australian turned asylum seeker advocate, and many permutations and combinations located between the extremes conjured up by a white cosmopolitan man in an airport lounge, and a non-white woman in a kitchen, a temple, or a remote community. The purpose of my project, then, is to shed light on the 'cosmopolitan becomings' of people and groups whose stories are grossly under-represented or mis-represented in our popular media and culture. Such becomings may not fit the brief of an Australian tourism marketing campaign, but they may just be more indicative of the meaning of citizenship in the 21st century.

Is there any Joy in being an 'Ethnic Killjoy'?

An exhibit at the War Remnants Museum, Ho Chi Minh City (Vietnam)

As I edge closer to (finally) attending my Australian citizenship ceremony later this month, I am wondering if a few pieces of paper will really allow me a greater sense of psychic belonging to this land. Perhaps after almost 12 years of being an outsider both in India and in Australia, I am simply looking forward to having a current address and a national identity that are somewhat congruent. But perhaps this inner outsider-ness is here to stay.

Perhaps this sense of looking in from the outside, this perpetual hybridity emerged much before the international migration experience. As a child of a Sikh family growing up in a largely Hindu city in a Muslim-majority state, and attending a Catholic school, I probably grew up with a greater ease with 'diversity' than similar-aged Anglo-Australians in the 1980s and 1990s. Still, not ever belonging to any semblance of a majority community or a numerically dominant ethno-linguistic group rendered me forever observant of what these inter-cultural interactions entailed. This is not unlike the Parsi girl in Bapsi Sidhwa's novel, 'Cracking Earth' who reflects on her insider-outsider status as India and Pakistan are being partitioned in 1947.

While there was no segregation in the school yard along religious or caste lines, I did wonder what impact the militancy in the state (Jammu and Kashmir) would have on our formative selves. The discord of our environment was most tangible for us when we witnessed a few bomb explosions at a stadium in the city where we were gathered to perform for the Indian Republic Day festivities. I don't recall us calling for a ban on the burqa, or otherwise ostracising our Muslim classmates. Yet, the recent flood in Kashmir has brought forth a tide of jingoistic nationalism and Islamophobia that I seldom associated with the place I grew up in. According to journalist Chirag Thakkar writing for Kafila, 'TRP-hungry television studios build a spectacle that is acutely wedded to a deep-rooted, pungent nationalism around catastrophe and relief in Kashmir'.

Perhaps I was indulging in a bout of diasporic nostalgia by romanticising my hybrid childhood experiences. But equally, it is likely that this inter-cultural utopia generated in the mind of a 10-year old that gave her a sense of belonging for the present and foreseeable future. It was accompanied by an implicit faith that most of her 'majority' and 'minority' comrades thought likewise. However, not being party to the last decade or so of neoliberal transformation and religious divisiveness in India has left me bewildered at the recent turn of events. Every other Facebook post on my news feed from a former school friend that implores the Muslim 'other' to glorify the rescue efforts of the army pushes me further away from this new essence of what it means to be India.

At the same time, the latest rhetoric about belonging to 'Team Australia' is alienating for me and a number of close friends and colleagues who do not share the same political beliefs as the current government. Yet, whenever I move out of this comfortable bubble (such as by tuning into the wrong radio station, or overhearing an uncomfortable conversation on the train), I am reminded of being on the fringes all over again. In a piece for the The Conversation late last year, I referred to this as being an 'ethnic killjoy' . There have been many occasions of late where my ethnic killjoy resilience has worn thin, and I have stayed quiet when I would have otherwise attempted to explain and elaborate. Perhaps I am adjusting to my officially bestowed Australian-ness and the killjoy will return once the citizenship pledge has been taken and recycled in the correct bin.

You Think You are Making a Documentary, but the Documentary is Making You*

*This is the first in a series of monthly posts until I complete my new documentary project on ordinary, everyday practices of cosmopolitanism (hopefully by the end of 2015).

I thought I wanted to make a documentary about cosmopolitanism to re-jig my original youthful dreams of being a traveling creator, perhaps akin to a foreign correspondent. The reality of a demanding full-time job and other commitments has meant that my fantasies of exploration have moved to the streets and treasures of the cities I have resided in since becoming an adult (and there have been quite a few!). So this more realistic, adult version of travel is both about being a wandering tourist in one's own city (without the alienation and otherness often associated with tourism), and also a re-mapping of one's own life trajectory. I am only in the very early stages of this process, but have already begun to realise that my aspirations of world travel may have had less to do with disappearing, and may have been more about wanting to be found.

Last night at a party where I knew no one but the host, I hesitantly introduced myself as someone who had started to work on a new documentary on cosmopolitanism. I also unequivocally added that while the subject was infinitely interesting, I had yet to find a hook for the story. My fellow party-goers (all involved in creative endeavours of one kind of another) pitched ideas and offered suggestions that took me by pleasant surprise. An actress I talked to was of the opinion that being open to others, especially those from other cultures, was about being a certain kind of spiritual that transcended religion. Her partner, an introvert with a wide range of specialised interests said that cosmopolitanism to him meant blending into the crowds of a big city. He added that this suited those with temperaments similar to his own. A former actor and media diversity advocate didn't like the word 'cosmopolitan', and frankly told me that it sounded 'wanky'. He did, however, have a taken on being more worldly. As a half-Maori lover of chocolate and toast, for him it was food that helped migrants penetrate a society. I knew that food was powerful for invoking individual and collective memories, but also aware that it was a hackneyed and misunderstood metaphor when talking about contemporary Australian multiculturalism. We did, however, come to the conclusion that the pathways of food and what it said about a city/society at any given point of time was worth documenting.

I may end up using food (but not national cuisine) as the glue that holds my narrative together. What I am also interested in exploring now, as a result of these fortuitous conversations, is how personal histories and self-perceptions intersect with social conditions to make us more or less cosmopolitan. It is almost as though we bear witness to both our own growth, and that of our physical world to establish relationships with 'others'. These others may belong to a different group in the school, the workplace, the gym or the local shopping centre, but the cosmopolitan self is able to participate in an ethical encounter that is cognizant of similarities as well as differences. I am not suggesting that there is a personality type that is more pre-disposed to acting is such a manner. Most of us are fluid to a degree, and I would hope that what I uncover through the process of making this documentary is precisely what turns on the cosmopolitan switch for a wide range of (unlikely) people, and how they make it a part of their everyday relational practices. In the meantime, I will continue to look for the right cultural metaphor even as I wait to arrive into a state of balanced, adult selfhood.

When the Pressure Cooker (finally) Whistled

I have been using food-related anecdotes to begin and flavour many a personal/political story. Yet I know that this loaded metaphor is often used by those whose politics, or lack thereof I am trying to contest.

All the 'ethnic' food and leisure precincts that have sprung up in Australian capital cities in the last decade or so are such battlegrounds of meaning-making. First, there are the store-owners who may have arrived as students, and after struggling to bust the proverbial bamboo ceiling in their chosen field, they decide to set up a small business. Then, they are trying to cater to not just their own regionally or linguistically defined community, but also fellow 'ethnics' who may use similar ingredients, as well as the occasional curious 'outsiders' who may want to cook up a curry for their exotic new date, or try aloe Vera juice recommended by their nutritional coach. Finally, outside of this neat business-client relationship are a wide range of actors and agents attempting to claim this space for their own ends. The community leaders get photographed in the area for a particular festival - this is published in the community paper which is placed in stacks at the store counter and next to the DVD aisle - this is then digitised and publicised through various social media networks - which then gives an impression of the area to bigger players, mostly local politicians. The story then goes that a string of stores of a particular kind justifies using pretty little titles:  'Little India', 'Little Vietnam', 'Little Italy'. This serves the dual purpose of keeping these precincts from getting 'big', and also showcasing the 'multiculturalism' of the thriving, dynamic metropolis.

This showcasing is not just akin to putting on a display for aesthetic reasons. There is a particular marketing of ethnic difference by all parties involved that goes largely unquestioned in the celebratory pho and falafel picture that is painted of multiculturalism. Sure, the people involved in the transaction talk to each other, but one is usually identified as the Asian, and the other as the cosmopolitan consumer. I recall a particular episode of the ABC2 series 'Dumb, Drunk and Racist' where a white resident of Cronulla shows his solidarity with the local Lebanese community during the infamous riots in 2005 by going and eating at a nearby falafel shop. It is also reminiscent of the 'Vindaloo against Violence' movement that was started by a bunch of well-meaning Melburnians in the aftermath of the attacks on Indian students in their city in 2009-2010. I am heartened that there are those in our cities who value fellow residents who may not hail from the same ethnic or class background, but also bothered that their picture of these people is a picture of their 'authentic food'.

This brings me to why I have resisted learning to cook my own authentic food for so long. It was not just a case of wanting to display more cosmopolitan tastes by declaring that I was better at baking that at making curry. Weak sinuses and a revulsion to hot food meant that onions and chilli - two essential ingredients in a wide variety of Indian meals - were replaced with shallots and paprika in my culinary inventions. I also took great pride in adding French and Italian cheeses where they don't traditionally belong. Fancy some bocconcini on your yellow dal? I highly recommend it. Fuck tradition. It should go in the waste, not the recycle bin.

Except I was embarrassed when a fellow Indian friend stayed over one night, and was surprised that most of the spices in my pantry had either expired or were unopened. I went on to buy not just brand new fragrant masalas, but also a fancy little steel set to store them in. They now take pride of place on my tiny kitchen bench, and sit happily amidst pie pans and Tia Maria. Because of their high visibility, and during a recent amorous/domesticated life phase, I used them rather frequently to cook up everything from my favourite red kidney beans (rajma) to the humble but delicious okra (bhindi). Still, the pressure cooker my mother got me a few years ago remained out of reach on a higher shelf and gathered dust in its unused emptiness. Would using the pressure cooker be my ultimate cosmopolitan test? Did I not need to know the rules first to bend and mend them?

On my way back from work one day, I stopped at a Nepalese grocery store to stock up on their steaming fresh momos. I then remembered that I was out of my usual lentils that cooked quickly. Failing to find them in this store, I picked another kind, vaguely knowing in my gut that they might require more patience, and perhaps even more tradition. They stayed bundled up all semester long, until I realised the time was nigh to get tips from my mum, and get that pressure cooker off the not-so-reachable heights. My first attempt at using it was a classic fail - putting the cooker on high heat to try and get it to whistle quicker. It ended up making most of the water evaporate! For my second go, I was gentler and practiced slower cooking and more generous seasoning. The results were probably still not authentic enough (soupy, yet not mushy like a curry), but I was reasonably sure that I had passed my own pressure cooker of a test.

The pressure test for Australian multiculturalism in the present day is not dissimilar. There needs to be an exercise of personal and collective agency on the behalf of the migrant communities that affirms their cultural history, and also allows them to experiment with new forms of belonging in shared spaces. This allowance is also something that needs to become part of media and political discourse - where the trajectory of particular cuisines is recognised, but not covered in cling wrap so it can't breathe. Our communal whistle emanating from this pressure cooker may take a while, but it could be a delicious brew that transcends both capitalist logic and vote-bank politics.

Smells Fishy: Cosmopolitanism in Australian Suburbia