Gastroethnic Postmemory

The article argues that discourses associated with memory often focus on material memory, especially in Jewish and Holocaust memoirs, but its association with non-radical objects, such as food, is seldom explored in the context of Indian Partition. Food, in the Indian postcolonial context, carries the wounds of struggles and tastes like survival strategies of intelligent navigation through the trauma of race, caste, class, and gender. The present study offers a reading of Madhushree Ghosh’s Khabaar, engaging the foodscapes of Bengal through the amalgamated lens of material engagement theory, non-radical object theory, and postmemory of partition. Food is a cultural symbol in Bengali households that speaks about the ethnic realities of contemporary society. Bengalis have endured and resisted every challenge thrown their way—famines, floods, riots, displacements—one gastronomical delight at a time, passed down across generations as a testament to their resilience. The study aims to ignite a conversation on the power of non-radical objects, specifically recipes and food, in emphasizing how memories and postmemories of the Partition and associated displacement shape and reshape individual relationships with food and continue to persist as inherited memory not only through the cuisine but also through the stories linked to each unique dish served.