Author Charmaine O’Brien’s new book dives into India’s urban food culture

Updated On: 30 April, 2023 08:14 AM IST | Mumbai | Sucheta Chakraborty

Australian culinary historian and author Charmaine O’Brien’s new book charts the rapid transformation of India’s urban food culture

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Stuck in a Delhi traffic gridlock circa 2016, the thought occurred to me that rather than being a so-called ‘developing’ nation, India had reached the future in her metropolises,” Charmaine O’Brien writes in the Introduction to Eating the Present, Tasting the Future: Exploring India Through Her Changing Food (Penguin Random House India, R399). The experience of India’s bursting megacities and the general transition from rural to urban living in the country contributed to her decision to focus on food in urban India. O’Brien has lived in India and researched and written on the country’s food since the ’90s, observing how urbanisation played a decisive role in changing the country’s foodscape. In a conversation about her new book with mid-day, she discussed some of its central concerns: the growing uniformity of taste and the availability of western-style food in the metropolises, women’s traditional association with domestic kitchens and regional food and the gradual movement of food in India from what she calls “inside to outside” with greater social freedom and the availability of convenience foods.

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