WHY SABZI MANDI?

Food is one of the greatest equalizers of our modern world. It is also the basis of human connection, our collective memory, and brings people from all walks of life together. My paternal grandmother, always says, “Daane daane pe likha hai, khane wale ka naam,” which loosely translates to “Each grain is pre-determined."

In one episode of the magnificent podcast, "The Splendid Table," the celebrity chef Marcus Samuelsson says - "We take it for granted that we can all eat together now." Making a reference of course to the civil liberties battle that African-Americans fought long and hard for - before which, you would never see White Americans and African-Americans sitting together, breaking bread. This could be a comment about anywhere in the world - whatever the social inequalities may be, food can be the equalizer, because it is something we all share.

As a history nerd, I always reveled in tales of peoples and communities in transition – those migrating from one place to another, taking with them their foods and cultures. Human history is full of these stories, and hence, migration and globalization are the oldest tales to tell - just look at the humble plov, plof, pulao or polow – rice that went all over Eurasia. The name which is so similar and yet just different enough, to showcase how it adapted to the region that absorbed it (or as we would say in history, "syncretism".)

In my pretentious Twitter description, I write “pre-21st century globalization and cosmopolitanism.”  These are the human stories reflected in the port cities (from Karachi to Zanzibar), the tales of sailors and merchants (of East African Gujaratis, and the Arabs of Kerala), the tales of how people traded in global products (spices, tea, coffee) way before the Europeans colonized this trade, and its results: in people, communities, food, art, and architecture. These are what I call the “Original Cosmopolitanism” and what the historians of the Indian Ocean history school of thought such as Abdul Sheriff, Ayesha Jalal, and Sugato Bose describe as the particular phenomenon of the “Indian Ocean Cosmopolitans.” For evidence, just look at the Dhows sailing across the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Indian Ocean, the peoples and foods of the Maldives, the spice trade, the silk route, and lest we forget, the original global commodity - café, kaffe, coffee - originally maligned as a drug (equivalent to modern-day marijuana perhaps) but rose to prominence in the shady coffee shops around the world where citizen activitists were born (if you want to know more about what I mean, read Callestous Juma's excellent chapter on Coffee as a disruptive innovation here, in specific, Chapter 2).

There have always been, and continue to be trade, migration, and culture that is shared between Africa and Asia, explained best by Indian historian K.N. Chaudhari’s extrapolation of French historian, Fraudel’s claim: “the sea is everything.”  The migratory routes in early 17th and 18th century from India, to East Africa, Mauritius, and the islands to the east (present day Indonesia and Malaysia), form an interesting explanation of these unifying factors.

Trade between Africa and Asia, was facilitated through the emergence of prosperous city-states, along the eastern coast of Africa (Kilwa, Sofala, Mombasa, and Malindi).  These port city-states were responsible for trading further inland. Gold, ivory, and iron from Zimbabwe was eventually traded in India and South-East Asia, at the same time, importing cotton, silk and porcelain from Asia . These port cities were the first experiments in cosmopolitan cities – many merchants from the Arab peninsula, the South Asian sub-continent, and South-East Asia settled down in some of these port areas, leading to the renewed emergence of the cosmopolitan and fused culture of the Swahili people who live in East Africa. The spice island of Zanzibar is the Indian Ocean trading world in reality – the multitude of ethnicities, cultures, languages , and religions there reflect its prime era.

The Indian Ocean World (Boston University, Pardee School of Global Studies, African Studies Center )

One of the most significant pieces of writing to my mind, on this exemplary connection is brought forward by the brilliant writer, Amitav Ghosh. In his piece, “What Nutmeg can tell us about NAFTA,”  in the New York Times, he shows the long winding tale of how Donald Trump may detest the world and want America first, but owes his wealth in fact to a little known deal the Dutch made centuries ago. He puts forth the beautifully intricate and complex web that was created in the advent of the spice trade and colonialism. He is no stranger to the theory I put forth above, and is not romantic or nostalgic about it either.  He writes:

“The obvious lesson of this history is that it is impossible to imagine a world without global connections: They have always existed, and no place has escaped their formative influence. But this does not mean that there is any inherent merit in interconnectedness, which has always been accompanied by violence, deepening inequalities and the large-scale destruction of communities. Nor should proponents of unfettered globalization forget that in the 19th century “free trade” was invoked by Britain and other Western powers to prevent China from stopping the inflow of opium into the country, where it was causing widespread addiction…. These aspects of globalization are often overlooked because the advocacy of interconnectedness has come to be equated with tolerance, while the resistance to it is identified with prejudice.”

I have admired thus, the writings of cultural narrators and authors like Amitav Ghosh and V.S. Naipaul,  who bring forward the humanity of this history. Thus, my desire to create this website - with no real purpose, except to explore these connections I find myself so drawn to. Thus I begin, what is a journey to discover, curate, observe, and appreciate – because we are all more than the sum of our parts. Frederick Buechner puts it best:

“You can kiss your family and friends good-bye and put miles between you, but at the same time you carry them with you in your heart, your mind, your stomach, because you do not just live in a world but a world lives in you.”

This is an intellectual marketplace - of all things that connect with my passion i.e. food (which I realized is connected to everything else I love - history, art, people, and culture.)

This is my sabzi mandi.