Bad Table Manners
by Whetstone Radio Collective
Bread Is Life: Kashmir’s Sacred Flame - Whetstone Audio Dispatch
About this podcast
Bad Table Manners pushes the boundaries of food storytelling in South Asia. Despite a universal love of delicious food, South Asian communities’ narratives and food practices maintain social hierarchies, caste inequalities, and racial and gender discrimination. In spanning both “high” and “low” food cultures, this podcast deconstructs monolithic notions of South Asian or “Indian” food by diving into micro contexts of households, restaurants, neighborhoods, streets and communities. It also reveals how hyper-regional and local culinary expressions are shaped by global gastronomic histories and trends.
Hosted by Delhi-based anthropologist Meher Varma, Bad Table Manners is narrator-driven, ethnographic, and playful. It will take you to the seaside, through bustling markets, and the intimacy of the kitchen table in private homes. It reminds you that when good table manners are tossed, great conversation begins.
Bad Table Manners is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Whetstone Radio Collective creates storytelling dedicated to food origins and culture, with original content centering the perspectives of global majority populations and diasporas.
You can learn more about this podcast at whetstoneradio.com, on Twitter @whetstoneradio, on TikTok and Instagram @whetstonemedia and subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channel, Whetstone Media, for more podcast content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at WhetstoneMedia.com.
Episodes
- Bread Is Life: Kashmir’s Sacred Flame - Whetstone Audio Dispatch · 24 minWhat if a simple loaf of bread could tell the story of an entire place, its resilience, its politics and poetry? In this episode of Whetstone Audio Dispatch, host Meher Varma…
- Gardening on Water: The Dal’s Ancient Floating Gardens · 30 min · Episode 11Gardening on Water: The Dal’s Ancient Floating Gardens For thousands of years, Kashmir has been called jannat (heaven) by Urdu poets, travelers, and tourists. The Dal Lake in…
- Revolutionary Seed: Voice to Indian Farmers · 23 min · Episode 10In September 2020, the government of India approved a series of agricultural acts, often referred to as the “Farm Bills.” What was proposed threatened to change the state of…
- How Indian Food Became Frustratingly Hip · 34 min · Episode 9Thanks to the cool-ification of Indian food, traditional ingredients from the subcontinent, like turmeric and ghee, are now repackaged and resold in Western and Westernized…
- Beyond Momos: Imaginary Homelands and Tibetan Food in India · 29 min · Episode 8Beginning with a brief history of Tibetans in exile, this episode explores how food can create imaginary homelands, even if it means that authenticity itself needs to be invented…
- Ripples and Tipples: How Partition Changed Indian Food · 34 min · Episode 7In 1947, the British finally left India after 300 years of colonial rule. They created many arbitrary borders as they left, the most prominent of which was the line that was to…
- Mid-Day Meal · 33 min · Episode 6The Mid-Day Meal feeds millions of schoolgoing Indian children daily, and has widely been considered one of India’s most successful welfare programs. Two economists who have been…
- Where There Are No Butchers, There Are Cinnamon Buns · 40 min · Episode 5This episode flips the script on caste and food by celebrating and exploring the food practices of caste oppressed communities. Is there such a thing as “Dalit cuisine?” Do Dalit…
- The Dream of Two Kitchens · 42 min · Episode 4This episode presents a micro-history of contemporary Indian kitchen design, as told by Manju Sara Rajan, the editor of a prominent design magazine, and Madhav Raman, an…
- Eating Capital · 26 min · Episode 3Eating Capital focuses on the restaurant business in Delhi and Mumbai, an industry that, according to most experts, has irrevocably transformed due to the COVID pandemic. Cloud…
- The Juice of Mango Clichés · 36 min · Episode 2To speak about Indian mangoes may be cliché, but because Indians never seem to tire of the subject, there’s always some juice. London-based writer, Nikesh Shukla, will humorously…
- The Scale Show · 37 min · Episode 1This episode unravels the discrepancy between the illusion of oceanic abundance that our modern pescatarian diets are premised upon, and the reality of our waterways. To tell…
- Trailer - Bad Table Manners · 1 minHere’s a peek at what’s coming up in the first season of #BadTableManners, launching this Wed, Dec 15!
