Opinion The City and I: Jamshedpur taught me about belonging, one shared lunch box at a time
In a country emerging from the trauma of Partition, the industrial township’s most binding allegiance was not to language or faith, but to work
In some respects, Jamshedpur can be compared to cities like Delhi or Mumbai, themselves cultural melting pots. The difference is historical depth. (Source: Wikimedia Commons) Among the many soft, hazy memories of childhood is one of that girl in my class who brought banana chips for lunch every day. I must have been around seven or eight at the time. I negotiated with her to be allowed at least a few chips from her tiffin every day. Until then, the only other kind of chips I had tasted were the ubiquitous “Uncle Chipps”. There was something unusually delectable about the banana ones: The mild sweetness of ripe bananas, a clean, brittle crunch, and the nutty fragrance of coconut oil. I remember little else about her, except that she was from Kerala and that she was my first introduction to a cuisine far removed from my Bengali palate — one I would come to cherish over the years.
Kerala cuisine was only one of the many cultural introductions I encountered while growing up in Jamshedpur, the steel city where I spent a significant part of my childhood. I moved there from Kolkata at the age of four, when my father secured a job with one of the Tata-owned companies. He was among the many young men from across India whose professional aspirations took them to this fast-growing industrial town.
Jamshedpur was not even 100 years old then. Founded in 1907 by Jamsetji Nusserwanji Tata in a bowl of forested hills on the Chhotanagpur Plateau, it was envisioned as the site of India’s first large steel plant. Within decades, the city emerged as the country’s first planned industrial township, drawing skilled and unskilled workers from across the Subcontinent.
Although Jamshedpur lay first in Bihar and later in the newly carved state of Jharkhand, it came to embody something larger than regional identity. It became a city relatively unanchored from language, caste, religion, or community, shaped instead by work and shared aspiration. As children, we were not conscious of this. Yet, as witnesses to our parents’ middle-class ambitions in a newly liberalising India, we absorbed a pluralism that feels increasingly fragile in today’s polarised climate.
My friendships reflected that diversity. Tanya, whose family hailed from Uttar Pradesh, introduced me to the joys of kadhi-chawal, chaat, and dahi vada. We had little in common beyond the fact that our fathers worked for the same company, a coincidence that was often enough to forge lasting friendships in industrial townships.
The same was true of Vunshi, my Kashmiri Pandit friend. We spent long afternoons playing with dolls at each other’s homes. At her dining table, I first tasted dishes like mutch (Kashmiri meatballs), yakhni, and khatte baingan. Years later, when I stumbled upon a Kashmiri restaurant in Delhi’s Pamposh Enclave, the first bite felt like a return to childhood.
There was also my Sikh school friend, whose long braided hair was the object of teenage envy. She taught me that pride in one’s language and faith could coexist easily with respect for others. From her, I learned gidda, the Punjabi folk dance we performed at a school concert, giddy with excitement over our new parandis and Patiala suits.
Company-hosted gatherings for employees’ families were another defining feature of life in industrial towns. Festivals — Holi, Diwali, Independence Day, Vishwakarma Puja — were marked by music, food, and large communal celebrations. I remember especially the litti parties hosted by one of my father’s colleagues.
In some respects, Jamshedpur can be compared to cities like Delhi or Mumbai, themselves cultural melting pots. The difference is historical depth. The cosmopolitanism of those cities is the product of centuries; Jamshedpur sought migrants, rather than migrants seeking the city, and was built brick by brick by those who came to work there.
Its residents were proud of their identities as Bengali, Punjabi, or Kashmiri, but equally proud of their shared identity as Tata employees. In a country emerging from the trauma of Partition and reorganising itself along linguistic lines, Jamshedpur stood apart. Its most binding allegiance was not to language or faith, but to work — and to the idea of building a better future.
Roychowdhury leads the research section at Indianexpress.com
adrija.roychowdhury@indianexpress.com
Share
