ABSTRACT
While food has played a central role in many Indian films, this chapter draws attention to those rare films that address the issue of caste through food in a generally myopic cinema where caste is erased or relegated to the background. It focuses on the works of two masters of the last century Indian cinema, Mehboob Khan (Roti/Flatbread, 1942) and Satyajit Ray (Ashani Sanket/Distant Thunder, 1973), from inside and outside the mainstream, who had different styles and made distinct narrative choices, in consonance with their aesthetics driven by melodrama and realism and investment regarding form and content. It also engages with Tamil films, one from an earlier period (Bagapirivinai/Partition, dir. P. Bhim Singh, 1959), wherein caste is marked but not addressed and a recent one (Seththu Maan/Deer in the mud, dir. Tamizh, 2021), where caste occupies the centre to foreground the changing trend. While the initial segment of the chapter focuses on the centrality of food in the melodrama-driven Indian cinema and the casteist prejudices in the family and regarding Others, mainly the tribal populace, the latter one engages with the Brahmin/Dalit caste divide and the voices of the Dalit community in interrogating oppression in contemporary cinema/life.
