The rise of queer food books in India: how kitchens shape identity and belonging

It begins, as many meals memories quit, in a kitchen. In the recently released biography Chapal Rani: The Final Queen of Bengal (Seagull Books), author Sandip Roy remembers how Chapal Bhaduri, the legendary female impersonator of Bengali jatra folks theatre, lingered in his mother’s kitchen.

No longer playing rough with the para (neighbourhood) boys exterior, however drawn as an alternate for the rhythms of domesticity: the stirring pot, the clink of bangles in opposition to a reducing blade, the aloof choreography of care. Meals, for Chapal, used to be inheritance.