Tasting socio-economics

Abhijit Banerjee dishes out economic systems and cultural practices on a plate

- MOHIT HIRA

Abhijit Banerjee's Chhaunk: On Food, Economics and Society isn't just a book. It's a mélange that effortlessly blends memoirs, a personal diary, economics, social sciences, history and, of course, recipes. Nostalgia is as integral to the book as salt would be to khichdi (and there are some worth-trying khichdi recipes in it).

Unlike the predictable fare laid out at hotel buffets, this is a meticulous curation of many flavours laid out for a reader to sample in no particular order; though, it would be good if you started at the beginning (the section called Economics and Psychology)—the appetiser as it were—and proceeded down to the main course (Economics and Culture) and the dessert (Economics and Social Policy).

I'm quite sure the Nobel Laureate-turned-author did not have this three-course meal in mind when he wrote his fourth book, but that's how I'm devouring it. And the real chhaunk—or tempering—isn't anything he's written about, but the exquisite woodcut-like illustrations by Cheyenne Olivier that, for some inexplicable reason, remind me of Sergio Aragones' marginals in MAD magazine. Go figure!

But before I go further, a disclaimer: Abhijit Banerjee and I are connected, albeit in a way that he will not recall. He had a Yashica SLR camera that he was selling in 1988 (or thereabouts) in Calcutta, and I bought it off him for the princely sum of ₹3,500 (worth around ₹15,000 with inflation factored in today). I still have the camera and, though it hasn't been used in a while, it will probably work. Being the squirrel that I am, I will not get rid of it, perhaps because of its provenance. But the reason why I possess it is because Abhijit's brother Aniruddha (Ani, as we fondly called him)—who's mentioned briefly in Chhaunk—was a colleague.