Revisiting Indo-Pak History, Gender and Power Relations through Food Tropes in Kamila Shamsie’s Novel Salt and Saffron

Abstract

Food is one of the basic human needs. But it also serves as the signifier of and is studied with a close relationship to the issues like cultural identity, history, gender relations, social status, behaviour, and intelligence. This research paper explores the subtle and complex significance of food and cuisine in a contemporary Pakistani author Kamila Shamsie‘s novel Salt and Saffron in which power, gender, class, race, history and cultural identity get produced and articulated through culinary negotiations. It will be seen that food, like history and mythology, has been used to centralize certain discourses about gender and power relations. Central to the present discussion is the role of kitchen as a space which is used by the novelist to construct the notion of cultural superiority, gender biases and class consciousness. Moreover, kitchen is also studied as a carnivalesque space which helps to resist and subvert the traditional binaries of male/female, master/servant and speech/silence. The paper further explores the subversive ways in which food and its imagery has been used to demythologize historical personages and deconstruct grand narratives in the Indo-Pak history. As the taste of a food is affected by the presence or absence of a minor ingredient like salt, the novel treats history of the Indian sub-continent like a dish whose course can be altered by the inclusion or exclusion of minor narratives and details.