Priyal Ranka, who is part of The Locavore’s editorial team, curates a list of essential stories—readings, interviews, and audios—to broaden our understanding of animal foods, and explore how they sit within memory, ecology, caste, access, and taboo.
Personal vignettes addressing the tensions between diet, religion, and caste in India
1. The Things I Will Put in My Mouth, a chapter from the anthology Chillies and Porridge – Srinath Perur (2016)
Srinath Perur, through tracing his journey growing up in a vegetarian Brahmin family to becoming a “hard-core non-practising non-vegetarian,” reveals how religion, caste, income, and moral conscience inform our food choices.
Why I love it: Srinath presents a unique perspective on animal foods, having been brought up in a strictly vegetarian household. Through this positionality, he illustrates the importance of questioning one’s conditioning, belief, and habits—irrespective of one’s dietary preferences. He uses personal food preferences as a lens into wider social hierarchies, hypocrisies, and moral quandaries in India—making for a relatable yet topical read.
2. Drinking Fish, Pinching Crabs – Vijeta Kumar (2025)
This evocative personal essay is Vijeta Kumar’s ode to fish, one that involves exploding tiffin boxes, the art of intimacy, and the politics of caste.
Why I love it: Journeying from her school-going days to teaching forays, Vijeta’s poignant writing broaches broader institutionalised casteism. She describes the joys of cooking, smelling, and sharing seafood— overturning Indian oppressor-caste notions of purity, bigotry, and the politics of smell.
3. If I adopt a sattvic diet, would my caste change? – Oishika Roy and Mukta Patil (2025)
In this interview with The Locavore, Shahu Patole shares the process of translating dishes scarcely articulated in mainstream media, his research methodology, and his favourite greens.
Why I love it: Shahu Patole’s viewpoint adds nuance to the matters of caste and leftover food, highlighting gendered labour and knowledge systems. Simultaneously, it celebrates Dalit identity, ingenuity, resilience, and wisdom—tethered to the foodscapes of Marathwada.
4. They Eat Meat!, an excerpt from the book The Adivasi Will Not Dance – Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar (2015)
‘They Eat Meat!’ is a short story from the book The Adivasi Will Not Dance, a collection of stories set in the fecund, mineral-rich hinterland and the ever-expanding towns of Jharkhand. In the story, Panmuni and Biram Soren move to Vadodara in the autumn of their lives, only to find that they must stop eating meat to be accepted as citizens.
Why I love it: The narrative of the Soren family is redolent of the reality of many—precarious living at the mercy of employment, migration, marginalisation, cultural shaming, and erasure. The translated exchanges are direct yet emotionally gripping, with Panmuni’s pain and powerlessness palpable.
Interviews and Book Chapters on Nutrition and Public Policy
1. Vegetarian-only mid-day meals are state-sponsored discrimination – Ayesha Minhaz (2026)
In this interview, Sylvia Karpagam, a public health specialist, explains why soya and paneer cannot replace eggs, and how caste and corporate interests are shaping what children eat in schools across India. At the time of writing, in August 2026, the West Bengal state government handed mid-day meal preparation in Kolkata to ISKCON.
Why I love it: The Q&A style of the text makes for an easy read, while broaching nutritional, economic, and social concerns surrounding mid-day meals. The perspective of long-term nutritional science—presented in contrast to the scheme’s mythological basis for removing egg, garlic, and onion—is an urgent call for awareness and action. It challenges institutional casteism, which is compromising the health of school-going children, especially those from marginalised communities.
2. ‘Mid-day Meals’ and ‘The Politics of Food’, two book chapters from from the graphic novel, Food & Farming: A Journey Through India in Comics – Orijit Sen, Vidyun Sabhaney, Harsho Mohan Chattoraj (2024)
These two chapters are part of a graphic novel exploring food security and the complexity of Indian agriculture. Mid-day Meals, Chapter 9: The chapter delves into contentious issues like privatisation, the politicisation of food,and laidback monitoring behind the mid-day meal scheme across primary schools in India.
The Politics of Food, Chapter 10: Soni and Lucky go to the field to explore the impact of bans on non-vegetarian food—where the dietary preferences of few religious and caste groups are imposed on all Indians.
Why I love it: The colourful visuals, complemented by not-so colourful statistics, make for a digestible read of complex circumstances. It is well-researched and thorough, interweaving history, policy, and the ground realities of dwindling cultural diversity and nutrition, and livelihood loss and violence experienced by different stakeholders— students, farmers, butchers, vendors—as a consequence of restricted access to animal foods.
Audio-Visual Memories of Cooking and Eating Meat
Longing for Home, a listening experience – The Locavore (2023)A series featuring audio with animations, cataloguing people’s oral food memories and recipes through conversations that invoke a sense of home.
Why I love it: This intimate archive for meat-based dishes throws light on the different meanings animal foods can have for different people, their family and community—expressed in their own voice. More so, since it is recorded in local languages, it allows for a diverse collection of meat-related memories and recipes, from Paya Soup to Blood Sausages.
A glimpse into the featured stories:
Paya Soup
Auroni Mookerjee’s father Aniruddha Mookerjee shares his first food memories of visiting a butcher with his father. It was here that he learnt about different cuts of meat. As Aniruddha and Auroni discuss their family’s recipe for paya soup, we realise how both of their childhood experiences of eating and cooking offals enables them to understand meat as a source of care and nourishment.
Pappa nu Ghosh
Cousins Lamiya and Adil believe their shared love and affinity for cooking lies in their genes, given that they first developed a passion for food in their grandfather’s kitchen, watching him experiment with recipes. As they discuss their grandfather’s signature roast meat dish, they revel over how his recipes and techniques stand the test of time.
There are many more stories to listen to during long commutes and slow evenings—sharing family connections, memories, and recipes—including Mutton Pulao, Chutagi (a broth-like dish of round wheat dumplings and meat), Blood Sausages, Manja Vaada (a snack from the coastal town of Kayalpatnam), Khageena (a spiced egg dish), and Parande (a mutton gravy).
What can ingredients teach us about a region, a community, the ecology, and the food system?
1. ‘The Goat Who Died for Family: Sacrificial Ethics and Kinship’ – Radhika Govindrajan (2018)
This chapter is from the ethnographic novel, Animal Intimacies. It goes beyond a simplistic view of animal sacrifice—a practice questioned by both right-wing Hindu nationalists and animal activists today—to describe the mutual love between human and non-humans, forged long before the actual offering takes place. It is women who, by raising goats like their own children, build a reciprocal relationship with the animal.
Why I love it: The singular story of Neema di and her goat illustrates the diversity of relationships humans and non-humans can nurture. It presents animal sacrifice as a complex entanglement of folklore, kinship, religious practice, and tradition.
2. Mumbai Koli Project (2026)
This six-month-long story-telling and public engagement project spotlights Mumbai’s indigenous Koli community and their evolving relationship with the sea. Led by The Locavore, it builds on the documentary film, Against the Tide (2023), and is an exploration into the city’s fisherfolk, their knowledge, skills, resilience, and the uncertainties they face. It invites readers to engage with stories of people behind their seafood, while eating more locally, inclusively, and seasonally.
Why I love it: The individual stories, including photo essays, open the floodgates of an entire community’s knowledge system, skill, challenges, adaptation, and perseverance. While it highlights everyday struggles, it also celebrates community members’ ingenuity and evolving relationship with the tide and with seafood. A bonus is the accompanying recipes shared by community members.
3. Koni Juj: The Egg Fight – written by Priyadarshini Gogoi and illustrated by Pankaj Saikia (2022)
On the day of the Koni Juj (egg fight) during the Rongali Bihu festival in Assam, Mamoni wakes up early and chooses different eggs to take to the fight. Will she win the most number of eggs to become the Koni Juj champion?
Why I love it: The animated drawings that follow a child’s celebration of the Assamese New Year left me with the biggest smile. From Mamoni’s hilariously heartwarming expression as she loses (or wins? No spoilers!) the game, to her joyous surprise of sharing Anaideo’s egg bhurji with her friends, the story touches upon themes of culinary heritage, festivities, and friendship.
4. On hunting the hilsa and mastering its bones – Samanth Subramanian (2010)
This excerpt from the book Following Fish describes the practice and process of eating West Bengal’s prized hilsa. Shorshe ilish, perhaps the most popular technique of cooking hilsa, involves simmering and serving cuts of the fish in a mustard sauce so pungent that it punches your sinuses.
Why I love it: Samanth Subramanian puts his naive and curious self into the narrative, making his writing both enjoyable and informative. His witty metaphors and vivid descriptions transport one to the Lake Market and kitchens of Kolkata. Through light-hearted conversations with chatty vendors and chefs, Samanth unearths the city’s relationship to the sea and seasonality, its culinary skills and resourcefulness.
Learn more about the LFC quarterly theme, Know Your Desi Ingredients, here. Also discover other stories on ingredients, and beyond, in our reading list.
