Something’s Fishy: That’s my Biryani
Arfa Sirguroh
SYBA 2019
 |
| Fish biriyani |
Machli ki meri biryani hai
Poori
Konkan uski deewani hai
Hyderabadi
ko dikhao, jal Jaaege
Eid me khilao, mehman nikal jaaege.
For the sake of research, I went online to check the
history of Biryani. Multiple websites and cookbooks listed and chronicled the history
of a variety of Biryani- Kacchi, Delhi, Hyderabadi, Dhakaiya, Memoni, Kolkata
and even Tehari biryani. Tehari, pardon me if you are a “No-veg Nazi”, is a
type of a Vegetarian biryani which was developed for the Hindu
bookkeepers of the Muslim Nawabs.
Imagine, a veg biryani
was listed, but there was no mention of Fish biryani, a delicacy among the
Konkani Muslims. This took me aback. It was shocking to see no mention of Macchi
ki biryani, a dish I grew up knowing, eating and loving. It is true that I
never failed to get a “What on earth did you just say?” reaction from my Muslim
and non-Muslim friends alike at the mention of the name. Fish…in a Biryani?
Often times when people
get the knowledge of the religion I follow, Biryani, without fail, makes its appearance
in the conversation. As a Muslim, it is expected of me to like Biryani, perhaps
know how to prepare it and definitely bring it to college on the day after Eid.
And I have always been fine with it, in fact, I love sharing my culture with
the people I know and getting to know other people by means of sharing my
culture. Fortunately or unfortunately It also makes me content that there is
one aspect of Islam that is seen in a positive light in India, Biryani is
something that is universally adored.
However, I have never
been asked about the type of Biryani I consume. It has always been a common
understanding that as a Muslim, Mutton would be my preference. It is not. Yes,
my family members do enjoy the taste of a Mutton biryani and it is also a
permanent dish on the Eid menu. However, as an individual, I dislike it. I
dislike the taste of Mutton in general. Yes, I am sure that I am a Muslim. Every
Eid, my mother prepares chicken Biryani for me, my sister and a few guests who
do not consume mutton. Us deciding to voluntarily eat chicken despite having
mutton as an option has always been questioned by relatives and friends. When
it comes to this, it must always be a matter of personal preference, but
because of a community closely linked with a food item, it does not remain a
question of personal preference but of belonging to a certain community. With
the long history of the Muslim empire in India and the evolution of Biryani
along with it [1],
the dish will always be dearly attached to the Muslims.
Hence to some people Fish
Biryani comes as a surprise and appears to be an odd combination for a Muslim to
consume. One such person is my sister who hates the taste of fish and in her
words, “It doesn’t belong there, it is like pineapple on pizza!”. To add to it
are the words of my good friend who is a North Indian Muslim, “Why do it when
you have an already delicious version of it?”. This makes me ponder upon the
notion of who gets to decide what belongs where and what doesn’t.
Firstly, the answer to
the question of why change the protein of a dish that is the most important
part of a biryani is very simple. The answer is accessibility. In the Konkan
region of Maharashtra, rice, fish and lentils are staple food items. These are
the most accessible ingredients to the region and hence makes its way into the
cuisine even to that of the sub-ethnic group of the Konkani Muslims in districts
of Ratnagiri, Raigad, Sindhudurg. The diasporic group in Mumbai, the Gulf,
South Africa and to some extent the United Kingdom have kept these local
recipes close to their hearts.
However, when I say that
fish is a common food item, Fish Biryani is not. The staple fish curries
consumed with daal or bhaaji do not consist the same type of
fish and aren’t prepared the same way. Fish biryani like any other Biryani is
consumed occasionally. The expression of serving fish biryani at a family
gathering in a common household is an expression of financial capital and
social class. Especially in Mumbai where sea food is expensive compared to
other proteins.
The preparation of Fish
biryani on the other hand also differs from the usual process of preparing biryani
with any other protein. Fish meat is tender and fragile, therefore extra care must
be taken while mixing, layering and cooking it. In a city like Mumbai where
time is a luxury, preparing a dish like this which must also be served right
away and mostly can’t be eaten on the second day, because if heated repeatedly,
the fish burns and loses its texture and taste. This doesn’t just depict the
financial strength but also the luxury of time one needs to have to maintain
their culture.
In my household,
maintaining the Konkani culture has never been a problem, However, I have never
seen this dish being served on Eid. Never. One of the reasons is that guests
come home on Eid to eat “Muslim ke ghar
ka khaana” and apparently, Fish biryani doesn’t fit into the category. Fish
is not Muslim enough. If they wanted fish, they’d go elsewhere, perhaps to a
Maharashtrian or a Bengali person’s home (This too is a generalization).
Next, we do not serve Fish biryani just
because the guests expect another kind of dish but also because we want to
express a certain aspect of our identity on that day. On the day of Eid, we
decide to express our Muslim side instead of our Konkani or even the hybrid
Konkani-Muslim side. Because it is Eid, we have to be part of the larger whole
and celebrate the auspicious day the way all Muslims do- with Sheerkurma and
Mutton Biryani. Not serving fish biryani means choosing not to identify as a
culturally Marathi person for a day.
When we take a closer
look at it, just like the layers of biryani we find layers of hierarchy. The
clash between the Konkani Muslims and the Muslims who accuse them of not being
true to Islam is a perfect depiction of how food preferences creates
differences among the same communities. To shed more light on the issue, the
Konkani communities that consume crabs are looked down upon and are sometimes
outcasted. There are phrases used by other Muslim communities towards the Konkani’s
like, “Khekde me jaan nahi, Konkani me imaan nahi” which essentially
means that since the Konkani’s consume crabs, they aren’t true followers of
Islam. This also makes clear why preparing a biryani true to the Konkani
identity on the day of Eid is always a bad choice.
To analyse hierarchy from
another perspective, one can take a look at who is making the dish and for whom.
Sanjiv Kapoor’s YouTube channel has a video on how to cook “Indian seafood biryani”.
Calling it that itself gives an idea of a very exotic dish. This recipe differs from how we cook it at
home, but again there are multiple variations of the dish in the Konkan itself.
The recipe varies as per the taste of the family. However, this particular dish
uses ingredients like clams, green AND black cardamom, blade mace (an
ingredient I heard of for the first time) and Saffron. The ingredients listed
above are expensive and a common household will not use most of these even on
an occasion. In my household, we use saffron in biryani only when guests are
expected. On Fridays when good food must be prepared, when cooked, fish biryani
has food colouring instead of saffron. No other Konkani home that I, my mother,
my aunt or my grandmother is aware of, uses blade mace which is a rather expensive
ingredient to add in a dish which already is expensive because of the protein,
fish. The type of fish used also differs from one household to another
depending on the financial standing of the family.
Notice how in the above
paragraph I have listed only my mother, aunt and grandmother, all females. That
is purely because the male members in my family have no clue about any ingredient
that goes into any biryani. To use one word, patriarchy. The dish is typically
cooked by the women of the house, like most other dishes. Since I grew up in a
joint family the quantity of Biryani cooked is always more, thus we see the
male contribution when either my father or my uncles do the final job of
bringing the handi from the kitchen
to the dining space where we all sit together with the dastarkhwan on floor,
eating fish, forcing my sister to eat fish, mothers sometimes deboning the fish
for the children and grandparents using the good taste of the food to try and
convince us to visit the village.
Fish Biryani, thus, to me
becomes more than just a biryani with an alternative protein. It is a dish
through which my family teaches me about my culture. The dish is important to
me be because one, it is a perfect representation of my hybrid identity-
Religiously a Muslim and culturally a Marathi. And two, eating it makes me
“extremely happy” (Sanjeev Kapoor Khazana, 00:09:40).
References-
Hajra, Nilanjan.
"The History Of Biryani | Sahapedia." Sahapedia. N.p.,
2018. Web. 26 Jan. 2020. https://www.sahapedia.org/the-history-of-biryani
Mish, J. (2007), "A Heavy
Burden of Identity: India, Food, Globalization, and Women", Belk, R. and
Sherry, J. (Ed.) Consumer Culture Theory (Research in Consumer Behavior, Vol.
11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Bingley, pp. 165-186. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0885-2111(06)11008-X
“Seafood Biryani |
Indian Recipe” YouTube, Sanjeev Kapoor Khazana, 16 August, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FtcJvs_0Idk.
Karan, Pratibha (2009). Biryani.
Random House India. pp. 1–12, 45. ISBN 978-81-8400-254-6
[1] The history of Biryani in India is
vast and has multiple versions hence it cannot be discussed in this essay in
detail. However, it is very easy to gain information on the subject, a few
links are provided for the same in the references below for the readers
benefit.
Comments
Post a Comment