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North-East food creators get candid on cuisine
Summary
Food influencers from the North-East are reclaiming their rich culinary heritage and busting myths on social media
In one of his Instagram reels, Athan Zimik uses a meme from the 1997 film Titanic to address the stereotypes associated with Naga food. As Rose (Kate Winslet) irritably snatches Jack’s (Leonardo DiCaprio) weathered sketchbook, the camera zooms in on a page with the text “Naga starter pack" written on it. What you next see is a list of ingredients — smoked pork, king chilli, bamboo shoot and axone or fermented soybean. The 39-year-old banker (@wanderingsoul) often uses pop-culture references to debunk myths surrounding his food’s culture on social media.
Zimik is part of an exciting crop of content creators from the North-East who are reclaiming their indigenous food heritage through engaging themes and formats on social media. By sharing unfiltered stories of their unique eating habits, they are owning the ancient cuisines largely misunderstood in mainstream food conversations.
Story-telling is key, and so is consistency. Take Avantika Haflongbar, for instance. Based in Haflong in the Dima Hasao district of Assam, she is best known for her thali challenge series on her Instagram page @roohi_haflongbar. Every day, she uploads a video of her lunch plate, introducing an array of dishes from her Dimasa heritage. There’s fish and meat, but the highlight is on the rare leafy greens and vegetables like winged beans and fish mint leaves that are endemic to her region.
Currently on her 208th thali—she has over 200,000 followers—Haflongbar can be seen biting into boiled pumpkin and bitter gourd whole with skin intact. “I want a karela to taste like a karela," says the 39-year-old MasterChef India 2023 contestant, who does not stick to any content schedule and instead cooks for the series the way she would everyday for her family.
For Zimik, as someone born in the Tangkhul Naga community in Ukhrul, Manipur, and raised in Shillong, the videos are a way to stay close to his roots. “Almost 80% of our food comes from the forests. Our tribal land rights govern the food systems, and are closely linked to daily life, including the political situation," he says while adding that it is crucial to create awareness about these dying food habits among Naga youth.
Zimik shuttles between Delhi and Hamburg for work, and also conducts fermentation workshops in the Capital. During visits to his parents’ home, he forages for wild gooseberries, harvests ground apples, or helps his mother prepare sticky rice cakes. When in Europe, he shoots in the wilderness, and cooks on his camping stove by the stream, mimicking the village life of his people. Zimik’s audience is aged 25-35, and is mostly from Nagaland, but also the US, UK, Europe and Canada.
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TACKLING PHOBIAS
There was a time when Nambie Jessica Marak had to travel to the farthest end of her village of Upper Rangsa in Meghalaya’s West Khasi Hills, and climb a mountain on the border of Assam to catch an internet signal and upload videos on her YouTube channel @EatYourKappa. Things have started to look up since last year with the arrival of high-speed internet in her village.
Marak’s short-format videos on her Instagram page @masterchefnambiemarak stand out for their candid story-telling. From writing the script to shooting and editing the videos, she is assisted by her academic husband Sunny Arokiadoss. Decked in traditional finery, Marak shares recipes of dried eel delicacies, chutneys made of bitter eggplant and dodim or fermented soybean, and gulab jamuns with local cherry tomatoes, a speciality from the Manipuri kitchen.
In one reel, Marak talks about kalchi, an indigenous alkali used in the region to amp up dishes and debunks the “north-eastern people eat anything and everything" myth. “I use my content to address certain perceptions and phobias that people have about the foods from my culture," says the 35-year-old MasterChef India 2023 first runner-up.
It’s not very often that you see food content from Arunachal Pradesh, but that’s what Malachi Tania (@itsmemalachi) posts about. The 26-year-old from Yupia, about 20km from the state capital of Itanagar, says, “Although Naga and Khasi foods are quite popular even outside the North-East, nobody talks about Arunachali cuisine." Tania has been documenting recipes from her Nyishi community for two years, and has 50,000 followers.
In her bamboo kitchen set-up, Tania tosses her ingredients and brandishes a butcher’s knife to prepare mithun meat (indigenous bovine species), steamed papok or banana flower parcels, egg chutneys and chicken with bamboo shoots.
In the 2019 Netflix film Axone by Shillong filmmaker Nicholas Kharkongor, a bunch of friends from the North-East are attacked for cooking axone in a south Delhi neighbourhood. It is no different for these content creators. Getting trolled is normal to an extent they have learnt to ignore it. “At one point it was about eating meat. Now I am called junglee because I eat leaves," laughs Haflongbar. “Someone commented even dogs won’t eat the food I cooked," says Marak. “You can unfollow or mute me if you don’t like what I cook," says Tania in one of her recipe videos. As Marak says in one of her recipe reels— “Let’s not hide our plates in shame"—it’s about time.
Rituparna Roy is a Mumbai-based independent features writer.
