In Kolkata, a women’s college seeks to build bridges between communities through food – The Hindu

A women’s college located in Kidderpore, a neighborhood sitting on the southwest edge of Kolkata, is planning to use food as a medium to culturally join the Muslim-dominated area with the mainstream, and build bridges between communities.

The Government Girls’ General Degree College in Ekbalpore, one of the pockets of Kidderpore, will host a heritage food fest, Khana-e-Kidderpore, on November 22, as part of World Heritage Week. The event,which will include talks and panel discussions, would essentially celebrate the wide variety of food that Kidderpore still boasts of, even though many in Kolkata associate the neighbourhood only with biryani and kebabs.

“From pice hotels selling multifarious traditional Bengali food to Awadhi kebabs, biryanis and pulaos, from traditional Bengali sweets to halwa puri and mawaladdu, from fish fry to bakharkhani and nan khatai, from litti chokha to dalvada and German bread, Kidderpore area has developed as a culinary basket of southwestern Kolkata,” Antara Mukherjee, an assistant professor of English at the college and the brain behind the festival, told  The Hindu.

The event is being held in collaboration with the West Bengal Heritage Commission, INTACH, and popular initiatives such as Know Your Neighbour and Break Free Trails. It will include the release of a local food map and a cooking competition, with local students being asked to prepare their favourite family desserts — a way of preserving recipes.

“This women’s college opened six years ago, the result of a long struggle by the people of Kidderpore. When I joined at the time, coming from Chandannagar, I came with a lot of pre-conceived notions about the neighbourhood. But things began to unfold for me as I interacted with the people and discovered a whole new space,” said Dr. Mukherjee. “You can call this event our reciprocal gesture to the neighbourhood.”

Melting pot of cultures

Kidderpore includes the areas of Ekbalpore (where the college is located), Mominpur and Metiaburz. It has been a city within a city, growing around the port in the latter half of the 19 ^th century, a part of it having already transformed into a mini-Lucknow when Nawab Wajid Ali Shah was made to settle there. Heritage enthusiasts lament that the incidents of crime reported from the neighbourhood in the recent decades, have overshadowed Kidderpore’s rich history and its reputation as a melting pot of cultures.

“The festival is essentially a celebration of the gastronomical plurality of the region — cuisines ranging from Awadhi and Bihari to local Bengali to Anglo-Indian to South Indian. These diverse cuisines not only highlight the rich intangible heritage of the area but also underscore the social diversity that is often overshadowed by stereotypical mindsets nurtured through preconceived notions.” Dr. Mukherjee said.

“Moreover, through this event, the college is also attempting to create the scope of sustainability for some of the oldest food and catering enterprises (most still family-run) by inviting eateries to participate as pop-ups, and display their best fare to what we believe should be a sizeable audience from a varied academic as well as social Kolkata diaspora,” she said.

“These diverse cuisines not only highlight the rich intangible heritage of the area but also underscore the social diversity that is often overshadowed by stereotypical mindsets nurtured through preconceived notions”Antara MukherjeeAssistant professor of English, Government Girls’ General Degree College, Ekbalpore