While the world knows Gauri Lankesh as a firebrand, it was her neighbour, the eminent artist Pushpamala N, who drew attention to another side of the murdered Bengaluru-based journalist and activist. “The Gauri we knew was also a lively, pretty, gregarious person with a great sense of humour. She used to throw large parties and was a good cook. She had given me several recipes which I use till today,” says Pushpamala in an interview published in an online journal, On Eating. Pushpamala also talks about creating a performance around food, Gauri Lankesh’s Urgent Saaru, and the short film, Rashtriy Kheer and Desiy Salad (National Pudding and Indigenous Salad), in 2004.
On the other hand, the pathbreaking Dalit writer from Bengal, Manoranjan Byapari, talks about how he used to be a cook and a servant at a tea shop. “I neither made the tea, nor sold it. All I did was work there — washing the dirty glasses,” he says in an article published in On Eating. Byapari reveals a little-known side of food politics. “I’d found work at a sweet shop there (Jalpaiguri). They didn’t pay me anything — I was just given food… To balance this iniquity, I was driven to polish off ten pieces of sandesh, rosogollas , kalakands and chamchams. Each of them were priced at four annas. That’s how I calculated my income,” he writes.
“I think food is a very important part of human life and experience. I’m not talking of fancy food, or one being a foodie, but just a basic necessity that you need to live,” says Ray.
Food is served from a range of perspectives in On Eating, each edition of the magazine peppered with complex sociocultural, political, gender and economic realities that steam up in kitchens and tables across the country. Possibly the only such magazine of its kind in India, On Eating is the brainchild of two academics, Pune-based Kunal Ray and Delhi-based Sumana Roy. “I think food is a very important part of human life and experience. I’m not talking of fancy food, or one being a foodie, but just a basic necessity that you need to live,” says Ray.
Both being teachers of the English language with an affinity for words, eating and reading about eating, Ray and Roy decided to start an online magazine, oneating.in, amid the uncertainty of the pandemic when a locked-down world went aggressively online with recipes for coffee, pasta, bakes and more. What the duo decided early was that the magazine would be multilingual and accessible to people who do not read only the English language. Byapari’s article was the first, published May 2021. Since then, stories, from original writings and translations to essays and poems, exquisitely illustrated, have been uploaded every month, creating a colourful menu in languages ranging from Bangla to Malayalam to Tamil to Hindi.
“Kunal and I are both accidental academics. While both of us are interested in creating an archive of eating cultures of the Indian subcontinent, we are also particular in making this accessible to those without a specialist vocabulary. We like well-written, well-researched essays that reveal unexpected histories,” says Roy. Her relationship with food is not unlike her relationship with everything else around her “of interest, wonder, curiosity, like, dislike, remembrance”. “Food makes it possible for me to experience the wonder of this world inside my mouth,” says Roy. Ray is “not a great cook but you had to cook to eat to survive during Covid”. Roy would send him “little recipes and voice notes and I would cook”.
The magazine is also unusual in not publishing excerpts or Instagram-style recipes. Instead, it has consistently maintained an intellectual depth and long-form articles that, clearly, target the thoughtful reader in an age of fast reads. Articles are through submissions but, every so often, it is the founders who seek out writers, such as the dancer Leela Samson. “Food is extremely important for a dancer, but there’s no writing about what a dancer eats. My only brief to Leela akka was to lead us in understanding this. She constructed an essay giving very interesting insights about her life,” says Ray. Another dancer, Mallika Sarabhai, talks about her life in the essay, “Food as Autobiography” while the writer Gita Viswanath talks about nasal feeding of her bedridden mother. Politician Shashi Tharoor, who enjoys eating, starts with “What can a Malayali writer think about when asked to write about food and eating? The answer is, inevitably, the Onam festival and its famous feast, the sadhya”. Like the courses of the festive platter, Tharoor takes readers on an extensive and eye-opening journey of food, ritual and social systems.
The writers get an honorarium, but how does On Eating find financial support? “We must acknowledge Sanjiv Kumar of Takshila Educational Society, who supports this entire activity to keep this website afloat. We also receive their support in terms of uploading new issues and maintenance of the website,” says Ray. The magazine has a two-member team, without a publicity team or a plan. “We’ve relied on social media — while being aware of its quirks and limitations — to share this archive every month. But it’s not been easy — we’ve not paid for sponsored posts, and, over the last few months, we’ve noticed a decrease in visits to the website. We are reliant on word-of-mouth, and will probably stick to this old-fashioned means of sharing,” says Roy.
“We had decided that we want to publish essays or long form, at least 2,000 to 2,500 words. We are able to sustain this model because we have this financial support from Takshila. I would like to believe, going by the emails we get, that everybody is our reader. The other day, we received an email from somebody in the West who wanted permission to teach an essay in their university. We said, ‘Please go ahead as the magazine is free access’. Anybody can read and teach and enjoy the content,” says Ray.
On Eating is the brainchild of two academics, Delhi-based Sumana Roy (Left) and Pune-based Kunal Ray (Right). 
“I think food is a very important part of human life and experience. I’m not talking of fancy food, or one being a foodie, but just a basic necessity that you need to live,” says Ray.
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