Redefining Turmeric

As Indians, we have all heard about the benefits of this miracle spice, turmeric. But with it becoming a firm fixture on the global beauty map, Sana Javeri Kadri has found a way to capitalise on its new-found popularity, while ensuring that Indian farmers are adequately compensated. She tells Faye Remedios what it takes to build a haldi empire in the West by reclaiming its post-colonial legacy

- Sana Javeri Kadri

Alleppey, or Alappuzha as it is also called, was once referred to as the Venice of the East by Lord Curzon, the British Viceroy to India from 1898 to 1905, and the turmeric available here was considered to be the gold standard of the Indian spice export market. Armed with this information, Sana Javeri Kadri set out to Alleppey in search of this precious commodity. Three visits to four different farms across Kerala, much car sickness, and too many leaky motel rooms later, Kadri found out that the legendary Alleppey turmeric is really just a blanket term for bright yellow turmeric and the appellation means absolutely nothing. She tells us where she finally found turmeric that met the mark and why she went looking for it in the first place.

As a young woman raised in Mumbai in the ’90s, trying to find your footing in neoliberal America is no easy feat. Kadri found that as she encountered issues of race, class, gender and social status on a foreign continent, her own identity, which was being slotted into labels such as ‘queer woman of colour’ or ‘Asian American’ threw up big questions that she didn’t have any answers to. “It wasn’t until a college professor used the term post-colonialism, and led me in the direction of literature, art and research around the subject, did I feel like I had finally found the language that my identity most easily translated into. Post-colonialism responds to the cultural legacy of colonialism and the extraction of resources, knowledge and capital through imperialism. It examines the lasting present-day effects of colonial rule on the former colony. I am a perfect product of the effects of colonisation, from my education (in English, heavy on Wordsworth) to the food I grew up eating (dal and digestive biscuits in equal measure), I am postcolonial to my core,” she says. The answers sought by