Bath packets and multiple Colombo(s)

Rice is a staple in Sri Lanka and is often eaten with three or more condiments. This article explores the modes in which this staple transforms itself when it becomes a packaged commodity of ‘rice and curry’ (called “bath packets”) in Colombo. Tracing the bath packets, I build an intertwined narrative, of: (i) gender performativity and perception in making, selling, and buying of bath packets, and (ii) the implicit socio-economic codes and urban imaginations therein. Conceptually, the bath packet and people involved with it are not analysed as merely operating in the urban, but the urban is read as a co-constituent in creating food as a socio-cultural construct. The article engages with urban knowledge production, its appropriation, legitimization, conflict, and subversion, via the socio-cultural constructs, gendered relations, and environmental processes around food.