Yogita’s story:
We live in Chennai in a joint family setup. I grew up in an eclectic household. My gran is Bengali, my aunt is Telugu brahmin, my dad is Tamilian, I studied in Bangalore and now live in Kerala. So you can imagine the food on the table – it has no identity and an identity of its own!
We were a family of 6 women and two men. I thought of us as a fairly matriarchal family. But I noticed when I was little that my uncle was always given a piece of chicken fry more than his sister, my mom. I guess the matriarchy was only on the outside, at the very root of it, not really.
I think my conscious sense of feminism began there, at the age of 6 or 7, when I was annoyed that my mother got three pieces and my uncle 5. Uncool!
But I love the chicken fry. My Telugu Brahmin aunt, who has never eaten meat, is the best cook of it! The last I ate it was in mid-2019 when I last went home. Then work and lock-down happened, so I couldn’t go back. I have had variations of it. But nothing like that.
Chicken fry is the reiteration of my feminism, as weird as that may sound.
My experience cooking and eating feminist chicken:
- I am uncomfortable touching and to some extent eating meat. My parents eat meat every week, but I for some reason raised myself vegetarian. I only started teaching myself to eat meat in college after some lessons in Anthropology. So cooking this was tricky. I took help from papa, which made the cooking special.
- While talking to Yogita about this food she said that she hopes it transfers some feistiness to me too. I laughed at this and am hoping it does!