Himalayan Voices at India’s Table

IN 2019, I watched a small but stirring film called Axone, set in Delhi and threaded through the everyday lives of young people from the north east.

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What stayed with me long after the credits rolled was not only its humour or its gentle storytelling, but the quiet ache beneath it. The film speaks of the rawness of being treated as an outsider in your own country, of being seen as the other because of the way you look, the way you speak, the food you cook or the scent rising from your kitchen. It names this simmering prejudice with lightness, yet with clarity.

Axone, or akhuni, the fermented soybean paste at the heart of the story, becomes a metaphor in itself. Its sharp, earthy aroma arrives before the dish does, a perfume built from smoke, time and tradition. For many communities in Nagaland, it is the taste of home. For many in the north, it is labelled strange. And that is where the wound sits. In our cities, food that does not resemble what someone grew up eating is often met with suspicion, as if unfamiliarity were something to correct. It is an injustice to the breadth of our geography and the cultural abundance that comes with it.