English Studies, 2013

Vol. 94, No. 4, 468488, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/0013838X.2013.780827

Curry, Tins and Grotesque Bodies:

Food, Cultural Boundaries and Identity
in Anglo-Indian Life-Writing
Caroline Lusin

The British Empire in India is closely bound up with the topic of food, since its origins go
back to the spice trade. In fact, culinary culture had a special significance for the British in
India. Many Anglo-IndiansBritons who spent part of their lives in Indiaused food as a
potent token of their Britishness. Yet, their eating habits displayed substantial Indian
influence. This essay hence considers Anglo-Indian culinary culture as an important
sphere of cultural adaption and rejection in which the British struggle for dominance as
well as the hybrid character of Anglo-Indian identity come clearly to the fore. In order
to investigate the connection of culinary culture and identity construction in British
India, the essay explores the functions of food references in Fanny Parks Wanderings of
a Pilgrim in Search of the Picturesque (1850) and Emily Edens Up the Country
(1866), two prime examples of Anglo-Indian life-writing. Focusing on the symbolic
significance of food as well as its close association with cultural boundaries and collective
identity, the essay considers British India as an area that generally highlights the
signifying functions of culinary culture.

Food is life, and life can be understood through food.1

One might well argue that the British Empire in India owed its existence to food, and
that food is among its most visible everyday heritage. After all, the origins of British
India go back to the spice trade, and Indian cuisine has long been a British favourite.
As David Burton has it in The Raj at Table: The whiff of spice lured Britain to India.2
Yet, the significance of food for BritishIndian relations goes far beyond historical and
economical facts. Sociological and anthropological research into culinary cultures has
foregrounded the important signifying functions food-related attitudes, habits and
practices generally fulfil. Although culinary culture appears to involve only banal
practices of everyday life, it is charged with powerful political and cultural

Caroline Lusin is afliated with the English Department, University of Heidelberg, Germany.
Email: caroline.lusin@as.uni-heidelberg.de
1
Counihan and van Esterik, 1.
2
Burton, 1.

2013 Taylor & Francis

 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 469

meaning. Eating habits and attitudes are central to our subjectivity, or sense of self,
3

and our experience of embodiment.4 In other words, food is crucial in constituting

our ideas of self, and it plays a key role in the relation between self and social or cul-
tural group. Hence, food-related attitudes, habits and practices must have been
invested exceptionally strongly with sociocultural meaning in a colonial context as
in British India, where the colonizing self and the colonized other did not go
together too harmoniously, and where social cohesion and cultural belonging were
particularly burning issues.
In this essay, I will therefore explore Anglo-Indian culinary culture as an impor-
tant site of cultural contact (and contest) between Britain and India. Proceeding
from this notion, I will investigate the connection of references to culinary
culture and identity construction in Anglo-Indian autobiographical texts.5 First
of all, however, a few general remarks on the identity-constituting functions of
culinary cultures.

Food, Culture and Identity

Eating food unquestionably represents above all a biological necessity, and the choice
of certain kinds of food often depends on the availability of foodstuffs.6 At the same
time, eating habits and practices are shaped by cultural and social factorsthey are
always mediated through social relations.7 Food choices are thus due to physiologi-
cal, perceptual and cognitive mechanisms as well as to social and cultural
representations.8
In sociocultural terms, food is associated with various kinds of spatial and temporal
boundaries carrying highly symbolic meaning. Culinary habits and practices are
powerful in defining boundaries between self and other as well as in symbolizing
social or cultural hierarchies and power relations.9 Cooking and eating can define
group and gender identities, celebrate social cohesion and perform rituals of cultural
belonging.10 They delineate boundaries between social classes, geographic regions,

3
Lupton, 1. See also Lennartz, 1718. In fact, critics argue that food can be imbued with symbolic value precisely
because of its association with everyday material practices. See Weismantel, 78.
4
Lupton, 1.
5
I am employing the term Anglo-Indian in its original meaning to refer to Britons who lived in India for a longer
period of time.
6
See Lupton, 7.
7
Ibid., 6.
8
See Fischler, Food habits, 937.
9
See Lupton, 26; and Counihan and van Esterik, 3. As Tobias Dring, Markus Heide and Susanne Mhleisen (eds.)
maintain: Food has always operated to dene homes as well as cultural otherness. Eating, in this ethnic sense,
does not only produce cultural meaning, it also draws boundaries between us and them and denes notions of
here and there (4). Likewise, Claude Fischler argues that [t]he way any given human group eats helps it assert
its diversity, hierarchy and organization, and at the same time, both its oneness and the otherness of whoever eats
differently (Food, Self and Identity, 275).
10
Dring, Heide, and Mhleisen, 2.
470 C. Lusin
nations, cultures, life-cycle stages, religions and occupations, to distinguish rituals, tra-
ditions, festivals, seasons and times of day.11 In particular, critics highlight the idea
that commensality is central to social life,12 fulfilling vital functions in most cultures
by maintaining kinship and friendship networks. Food, then, symbolically produces
and upholds bonds between members of the same social or cultural group.13 In fact,
certain kinds of food may be consumed precisely because of their identity-constituting
function. The consumer transfers their symbolic value onto him- or herself and
becomes incorporated into a certain social and cultural group.14 Conversely, expres-
sing distaste for specific foods eaten by other groups can function as a means of dis-
tinguishing oneself from them.15 Food preferences of individuals or groups are thus
integral to the way people are regarded by others, and how they themselves construct
a sense of self.16 Highlighting the intricate connections of food and identity,17 Claude
Fischler hence points out that cooking is not so much a matter of ingredients as of
classifications and rules ordering the world and giving it meaning.18
Yet, despite its life-affirming function of constituting order, meaning and identity,
food harbours certain dangers related to the act of its incorporation in the concrete
and symbolic sense.19 On the physiological level, consumption of impure, decompos-
ing or contaminated food can harm the human body through poisoning or infection.
Symbolically, too, decaying food represents a metonym of the mortality of human
flesh, the inevitable entropy of living matter.20 The meaning of food consequently
turns out to be highly ambivalent: [I]t forever threatens contamination and bodily
impurity, but is necessary for survival and is the source of great pleasure and content-
ment.21 In fact, these dangers involved in the incorporation of food also concern the
relation between cultures. Since food-related practices, habits and attitudes can create
order and meaning, integrating alien social or cultural elements into an established
culinary culture may mean risking social disharmony and instability.22
The identity-constituting functions of culinary culture therefore depend on a careful
balance of social as well as cultural others and selves.

11
Lupton, 1.
12
Fischler, Social Sciences, no page.
13
See also Counihan and van Esterik, 1.
14
See Lupton, 23.
15
See ibid., 357.
16
Ibid., 94.
17
See Fischler, Food Habits, 275.
18
Fischler, Food, Self and Identity, 285.
19
See Lupton, 3.
20
Ibid. In the visual arts, for instance, the numerous European still lives that incorporate decaying food as a symbol
of the futility of human existence, particularly those of the Dutch and Flemish schools, provide an eloquent
example of the signifying power culinary culture may unfold. For the connection of food and decay see also Len-
nartz, 10.
21
Lupton, 3. Marion Gymnich and Norbert Lennartz (eds.) highlight the ambivalence of food in the title of their
collection of essays, The Pleasures and Horrors of Eating.
22
Lupton, 10.
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 471

Concerning culinary culture, the distinction between self and other often
merges in the opposition of civilized and uncivilized. In All Manners of Food, a
survey of eating and taste in England and France from the Middle Ages to the
present, Stephen Mennell expands the idea encapsulated in its motto, a quotation by
Owen Meredith, Earl of Lytton: [C]ivilized man cannot live without cooks.23
Thus, Mennell shows that the development of eating practices and table manners
was crucial to the development of a civilized European society that espoused its own
peculiar concepts of proper taste and behaviour.24 Clear-cut notions of civilized
versus uncivilized tastes, attitudes and behaviour correlate with certain aspects of
culinary culture, such as food choices, eating practices and table manners.25 On the
level of symbolic practices, culinary culture and the idea of civilization are hence
inextricably linked.

India, Food and the British Body

If a refined culinary culture can be considered a hallmark of civilization, food and eating
must have carried powerful symbolic meaning in nineteenth-century British India,
which Britons set out to civilize on the premise of their own cultural (and political)
superiority. Most Britons newly arrived intensely experienced Indias otherness phys-
ically: in their memoirs, many newcomers confessed to having felt overwhelmed with the
heat, the smells and the throng of people. As E. M. Collingham has shown, the body was
in fact central to the colonial experience and held to be highly susceptible to Indian
influences.26 Living in India was considered potentially harmful to Britons physically,
but also psychologically, entailing indolence, improper manners or an undesirable
moral outlook.27 From the early nineteenth century on, the fear of racial contamination
and degenerationin other words: Indianizationformed a staple of Anglo-Indian life.
Preserving their Britishness thus was a key concern of most Anglo-Indians, and in this
regard culinary culture played a crucial role.
In the sphere of culinary culture, a number of issues in BritishIndian relations linked
to the anxiety of contamination come clearly to the fore. Above all, culinary culture gives
prominence to the incompatibility of British and Indian attitudes, norms and values.
Anglo-Indian cookbooks and household manuals leave no doubt that the Anglo-
Indian kitchen was a tricky place in so far as conflicting Eastern and Western notions
of cleanliness tended to clash there. On the one hand, Britons consumed food

23
Mennell, no page. Deborah Lupton traces the connection of culinary culture and the idea of civilization back to
Erasmus von Rotterdam, arguing that in De Civilitate Morum Puerilium (1539), Erasmus was intent on using the
ritual of meals to make society more disciplined (Lupton, 21).
24
See Mennell. In this context, see also Lupton, 20.
25
See Lupton, 2.
26
Collingham, Bodies, 2. The taxing climate was thought to cause hypochondria, fatigue, irritability, headaches,
insomnia, premature menstruation, sexual profligacy or insanity. In the long run, exposure to the Indian
climate was even expected to lead to racial degeneration. See Kennedy, 123.
27
See Buettner, 910, 2931.
472 C. Lusin
incompatible with religious Hindu or Muslim notions of cleanliness. For Hindus, the act
of eating in the presence of Britons would entail loss of caste, which rendered the impor-
tant signifying practice of commensality highly problematic. On the other hand, Indian
cooks tended to offend British ideas of hygiene. There are amusing, if somewhat unap-
petizing stories of British memsahibs entering the cooks premises to find the soup
strained through dirty socks or catch the resourceful table servant converting his toes
into a toast rack.28 In fact, to quote Flora Annie Steel and Grace Gardiners The Complete
Indian Housekeeper and Cook, first published in 1888, the idea that dirty habits were
ingrained in the native cook29 and very difficult to keep in check represents a
British stereotype.30 As the authors put it in their preface:

The kitchen is a black hole, the pantry a sink. The only servant who will condescend
to tidy up is a skulking savage with a red broom; whilst pervading all things broods
the stifling, enervating atmosphere of custom, against which energy beats itself
unavailingly, as against a feather bed.31

In the view of the authors, it is the task of the British memsahib, in whom they
premise a certain sense of duty, and the educated renement which refuses to eat
more than the necessary peck of dirt,32 to shun no effort in reforming that allegedly
uncivilized hell into a kitchen up to British standards.
Even if this proposition of The Complete Indian Housekeeper and Cook may seem
over the mark, it reflects the status assigned to the culinary sphere in British India.
More specifically, it points to the ideological functions cookbooks and household
manuals fulfilled there. As Gesa Stedman has pointed out with regard to English
French relations in the early modern period, these apparently practically oriented
texts are not innocent collections of material items and instructions,33 but pro-
foundly implicated in the cultural formation to which they belong. As in the case of
The Complete Indian Housekeeper, cookbooks and household manuals promulgated
culturally significant norms, attitudes and values. Essentially, The Complete Indian
Housekeeper amounts to an untiring exhortation on how to become a dutiful Victorian
memsahib sporting the virtues of [e]conomy, prudence, efficiency.34 In fact, the
authors draw an explicit analogy between domestic and political spheres, considering
the Anglo-Indian household as British Empire in nuce: We do not wish to advocate an
unholy haughtiness; but an Indian household can no more be governed peacefully,
without dignity and prestige, than an Indian Empire.35 According to Steel and Gardiner,
the domestic sphere should be shaped by the same qualitieshere dignity and

28
See Steel and Gardiner, 11.
29
Ibid., 789.
30
See also Crane and Johnston, xxixxii.
31
Ibid., 6.
32
Ibid., 67.
33
Stedman, 274.
34
Steel and Gardiner, 14. According to the authors, [t]he secret lies in making rules, and keeping to them (ibid., 12).
35
Ibid., 18.
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 473

prestige, two important catchwords of Victorian Imperialism as the social and pol-
36

itical sphere. Conversely, the domestic and the culinary sphere could effectively be used
to demonstrate the virtues of the allegedly more civilized, superior British culture.37
With regard to the virtues of Britishness, food-related attitudes, habits and practices
fulfilled important functions.38 As Collingham has indicated, consuming British food
was a means of claiming membership of polite society, and it possessed wider res-
onance as signifier[s] of British nationality in the colony.39 Just as standardized table
manners were generally designed to foster civilized behaviour and to emphasize and
assert the importance of culture over nature,40 Anglo-Indian eating habits and prac-
tices served to emphasize the superiority of British over Indian culture. Most of those
belonging to the more elevated classes of Anglo-Indian society carefully dressed for
dinner even in the jungle, a practice whose aim Jeanette Winterson has described
very astutely: [T]here had to be a centre, a talisman, a fetish even, that secured
order where there seemed to be none; dressing for dinner every night in the
jungle.41 Intent on demonstrating their cultural superiority, many Anglo-Indians
acted as gastronomic chauvinists42 par excellence, rejecting Indian food while they
tried to replicate British culinary culture. Many preferred eating gear of British prove-
nance and looked contemptuously down on Indian dishes.43 The especially conscien-
tious incurred great expense to serve tinned food imported from Britain, which
perfectly illustrates the idea that if food is consumed for its symbolic value, this
value becomes more important than the foods taste.44 Though of inferior quality in
colour, texture and taste, tinned food was popular due to its association with
home.45 In fact, the widespread preference for tinned food metaphorically reflects
the need to preserve British culture in the colony.46 The gastronomic chauvinism
the British displayed in India was thus part of their strategy of making themselves at
home in India, of demonstrating the superiority of British culture, and ultimately
also justifying British rule.
Yet, despite a tendency towards gastronomic chauvinism, Britons in India actually
fashioned a hybrid, specifically Anglo-Indian culinary culture. The daily routine
usually included an Indian-style chota hazri (little breakfast), and Indian dishes

36
See Collingham, Bodies, 1416.
37
See also Crane and Johnston, xxixxii.
38
This role can be traced back both to the centrality of the body in experiencing India and to the general cultural
signicance of food. The body was where the inuence of the Indian other on the British self turned out to be
particularly noticeable, whether it was through indisposition, illness or death.
39
Collingham, Bodies, 71.
40
Lupton, 22.
41
Winterson, xvxvi.
42
The term gastronomic chauvinism, coined by Michael Duffy, is here taken from Stedman.
43
See Collingham, Bodies, 6970.
44
See ibid., 6970, 158. For the latter see Lupton, 23.
45
See Collingham, Bodies, 71.
46
Ironically, the preference for preserved food also highlights the constructed and articial character of British
culture in the colonies.
474 C. Lusin
were often integrated into the menu.47 The very term curry probably referred to a
range of dishes with a spicy sauce adapted to the British palate.48 Culinary culture
in British India thus emerged from the same double movement between outright
rejection and covert appropriation Stedman has diagnosed for the cultural exchange
between France and England in the early modern time.49 In this context, it becomes
particularly obvious that while Anglo-Indians tried to flaunt their Britishness, they
in fact developed a distinctive culture of their own. Anglo-Indian culinary culture,
then, represents a sphere of adaptation and rejection in which the British struggle
for cultural dominance and the hybrid character of Anglo-Indian identity come
clearly to the fore.

Food and Identity in Anglo-Indian Life-Writing

Where Anglo-Indian identity is concerned, autobiographical documents written by
Britons in India are among the most revealing sources. With regard to the signifying
power of culinary culture, Anglo-Indian life-writing opens up a number of questions
pertinent to the issue of identity: to what extent is culinary culture used to delineate
boundaries between self and other? What role does the complex issue of British
Indian commensality play? Do the authors betray an anxiety of incorporation? To
what extent are food references linked to the notion of civilization? And finally,
what role does culinary culture play in the identity-construction of the authors?
In order to shed light on these questions, I will focus on two of the most promi-
nent and widely read authors of Anglo-Indian life-writing, Fanny Parks and Emily
Eden. Both were in India at the same time (though Parks arrived much earlier), and
both belonged to the official community.50 Parks was a very unconventional speci-
men of her age and society, who came to India in 1822 with her husband, a Civil
Servant. After having returned to Britain in 1846, she compiled and published a
selection of her journal-letters from India under the title Wanderings of a Pilgrim
in Search of the Picturesque, During Four-and-Twenty Years in the East: With Revel-
ations of Life in the Zenana (1850). In contrast to Parks, Eden spent only six years in
India from 1836, together with her sister Fanny, acting as First Lady to her unmar-
ried brother, Governor-General Lord Auckland. Subsequent to her stay, Eden pub-
lished a selection of her journal-letters home as Up the Country: Letters from India,

47
Breakfast and tifn (Anglo-Indian for lunch), for instance, frequently included curry and rice, and there were a
range of hybrid, typically Anglo-Indian dishes designed to meet European tastes, like kedgeree, a mix of sh, egg
and rice popular for breakfast, or mulligatawny, a peppery soup (see Collingham, Bodies, 72).
48
See ibid.
49
Stedman, 274. If cooking symbolically corresponds to a process of civilization, one might take this metaphor a
step further and argue that incorporating foreign foodstuffs into an established diet could be described in terms of
colonization. In both cases, this involves imposing ones own norms and rules on the colonized.
50
Within that community, though, Fanny Parks ranked considerably lower than Emily Eden, who as sister of the
Governor-General was at the very peak of the community.
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 475

an account of the Governor-Generals official progress through Indias Upper Pro-

vinces.51 Yet, their contemporaneity notwithstanding, the two women differed greatly
in their attitudes towards India. Parks committed herself enthusiastically to exploring
India, its flora and fauna as well as its languages, cultures and religions. For Eden, in con-
trast, living in India proved very taxing physically and mentally, and she took care to keep
her distance from the country. This explains the absence of interest52 in India she gen-
erally displays in her letters. As Eden bluntly put it herself: I hate information.53 Con-
temporary criticism therefore tends to regard the two as counterpoints. William
Dalrymple, for instance, clearly states his own preference in his introduction to Parks
journals: While the Edens are witty and intelligent but waspish, haughty and conceited,
Parkes is an enthusiast and an eccentric with a burning love of India.54 According to Dal-
rymple, Parks is more attractive to modern readers than Eden for one reason above all: [S]
he was a free spirit and an independent mind in an age of imperial conformity.55 A close
reading of Parks and Edens references to culinary culture, however, creates a more dif-
ferentiated picture.
The gist of Fanny Parks and Emily Edens self-construction in relation to India,
which transpires very clearly in their references to culinary culture, is best explained
in terms of the concept of the grotesque and the civilized body in the sense of
Michail Bakhtin. As Deborah Lupton has pointed out with reference to Bakhtins Rabe-
lais and His World:

In western societies, distinctions are routinely drawn between civilized and gro-
tesque bodies. The civilized body is constructed as the body that is self-contained,
that is highly socially managed and conforms to dominant modes of behaviour and
appearance. By contrast, the grotesque body is uncontained, unruly, less con-
trolled by notions of propriety and good manners.56

According to this denition, Parks at rst glance appears as a grotesque body par
excellence, at least in the eyes of her contemporaries. While modern critics appreciate
the centrality of exchange, interaction and reciprocity in Parkss experience of
India,57 she often found herself at loggerheads with the Anglo-Indian community
due to her unconventional afnity with India.58 In contrast to the acclaim of Parks

51
Besides, there are two posthumous editions of Emily Edens letters that are not restricted to the time of the gov-
ernmental progress, edited by her niece and great-niece and entitled Letters from India respectively Miss Edens
Letters.
52
OCinneide, 7. John Plotz has drawn attention to the same feature of Up the Country: Too much knowledge is
repeatedly revealed to be a dangerous at least a nauseating-thing (John Plotz, 670).
53
Emily Eden, Up the Country, 62. All following quotations from Up the Country will be indicated in the text.
54
Dalrymple, v. Rosemary Cargill Raza (no page) has pointed out that the alternative spelling Parkes is due to a
transliteration of the name from the Persian script, in which she signed her writings.
55
Dalrymple, vi.
56
Lupton, 19.
57
Sengupta, 95.
58
For instance, Parks was criticized for visiting an Indian princess at Delhi, allegedly in order to pocket presents.
Parks in turn attacks the ignorance of her peers: I felt it hard to be judged by people who were ignorant of my
476 C. Lusin
twenty-rst-century critics, a contemporary reviewer criticized her for what he con-
sidered her moral and cultural transgressions:
[W]hen she steps out of her own natural and better self for the poor affectation of
displaying her familiarity with the proverbs and superstitions of the natives, or of
repeating stories that other women would shrink from, her levity becomes
profane, and her Amazonian tone coarse and indelicate. We would be fully justified
in using harder words than these. Idol-worship is a foul and hateful thing and
no Christianand a lady least of allhas any more right to amuse himself or herself
with playing at idolatry, than with playing at theft, or drunkenness, or murder, or
any other deadly sin. The flippancy and levity, also, with which she refers to her
own faith, savour more of the cock-pit than the boudoir.59

In short, the reviewer blames Parks for violating important notions of propriety along
with fundamental social and cultural norms. Interestingly, his acerbic verdict corre-
sponds to the way in which Emily Edens sister Fanny describes her.60 As Fanny
Eden complains in a letter to a friend:
We are rather oppressed just now by a lady, Mrs Parkes, who insists on belonging to
our camp and has entirely succeeded in proving that the Governor-Generals power
is but a name. She has a husband who always goes mad in the cold season, so she says
it is due to herself to leave him and travel about. She has been a beauty and has the
remains of it and is abundantly fat and lively. [S]he informed us she was an inde-
pendent woman.61

Turning Parks physical stature into a leitmotiv, Fanny Eden caricatures her as a fat
attendant spirit, something very horrid and unearthly.62 Repeatedly, she mentions
their futile efforts to get rid of Parks, who stubbornly attaches herself to Lord Auck-
lands entourage for protection on her travels.63 In Fanny Edens depiction, Parks var-
iously transgresses the boundaries between what was then considered normal and
abnormal, acceptable and unacceptable. Obviously, she attracted the dislike of the
Edens not only by being obtrusive. Perhaps even more importantly, Parks dees con-
ventions by travelling about alone, and she subverts Lord Aucklands authority by

being the friend of the relatives of those whom I visited in the zenana. People who themselves had, perhaps, no
curiosity respecting native life and manners and who, even if they had the curiosity, might have been utterly unable
to gratify it unless by an introduction which they were probably unable to obtain (II:216). See also Dalrymple, xii.
59
Review, 4656.
60
In the version of Emily Edens letters published as Up the Country, Fanny Parks is not mentioned. Fanny Parks,
in turn, neutrally reports the doings and whereabouts of the Edens now and then.
61
Fanny Eden, 106.
62
Ibid., 151. This becomes obvious also in the following passage: If she were not so fat I should say she was some-
thing supernatural. My spirit is broke about her. I dare say we shall nd her settled in our home at Simla and shall
not have the strength to turn her out (ibid., 133).
63
The Magistrate of one station always travels on with us to the next. To each of these she has attached
herself, every one declaring they will have nothing to do with her, upon which George observes with much com-
placency, Now we have got rid of our Mrs Parkesand the next morning there she is, the mawk, her fresh victim
driving her in a Tilburyand her tent pitched close to his (Fanny Eden, 106, 108).
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 477

simply staying on. If Parks, then, appears as a grotesque body with regard to social
64

and cultural conventions, the Eden sisters represented the top of the Anglo-Indian
ruling lite, epitomizing the civilized body in terms of generally acceptable modes
of behaviour and appearance. As Ladies to the Governor-General, their whole existence
in India was geared towards ofcially representing British rule and prestige.65 The ways
in which Fanny Parks and Emily Eden employ references to culinary culture, however,
destabilize this apparently straightforward categorization.
Fanny Parks notions regarding food are largely in tune with her general stance
towards India, reflecting her combination of pragmatism and curiosity. In her constant
quest for knowledge, she for instance compiles longish lists of foodstuff,66 gives a list of
her households fare during the hot season,67 and comments on food prices.68 Often,
Parks concentrates on the provision and availability of food, which includes the ups
and downs of her own farmyard.69 In the same vein, she gives a lengthy account of
her garden and its horticultural as well as aesthetic value:

I must not quit the garden without mentioning my favourite plants. The kulga,
amaranthus tricolor, a most beautiful species of sag, bearing at the top a head or
cluster of leaves of three colours which have the appearance of the flower: it is
very ornamental, and used as spinach (sag). There is another plant, amaranthus
gangeticus (lal sag), or red spinach, which is most excellent. The ramtural, or
binda (hibiscus longifolius), adorned the kitchen garden; its corolla is of a beautiful
sulphur colour, the interior purple. The pods, when plain boiled, and eaten when
quite hot, are excellent; the French use them in soups, and pickle them as capers.70

Descriptions like these are part of her endeavour to accumulate encyclopaedic knowl-
edge about India.71 In this context, she largely ignores culinary culture in terms of
everyday cooking or commensality. Yet, the occasions on which Parks does mention
food in more detail are highly signicant in their implications.
While food as a symbol of Britishness remains strangely absent in her account,
Fanny Parks often foregrounds her special affinity with Indian food, but still

64
Additionally, Fanny Eden employs the grotesque in her description of Fanny Parks as a literary mode based on
incongruity. Thus, Parks alleged corpulence is oddly incongruous with the angelic gure of the attendant spirit,
and her obtrusiveness seems to contradict her self-pronounced independence.
65
Angelia Poon (7598) thus reads Up the Country as a performance of Englishness, but fails to regard the
important functions culinary culture fulfils in this context.
66
At Etaweh every thing was to be had that I wished for; peacocks, partridges, fowls, pigeons, beef, were brought
for sale; atr of roses, peacocks feathers, milk, bread, green tea, sauces; in short, food of every sort (Parks, I:338).
67
[W]e require wild ducks and teal during the hot winds when beef and mutton are disagreeable even to see on
the table; fowls, turkeys, rabbits, wild fowl, game and sh are the only things to tempt ones appetite in the grilling
season, when curries and anchovies are in requisition (ibid., I:228).
68
As for instance in Cawnpore: Very ne white grapes are now selling at fourpence-halfpenny per pound (ibid.,
I:137).
69
See for instance ibid., I:84, 136, 308, 314, II:52.
70
Ibid., I:31415.
71
See also Sengupta, 101. Grard Gcon thus compares Wanderings of a Pilgrim to a cultural travel guide, the
Baedeker, or Guide Bleu of Northern India (83).
478 C. Lusin
remains conscious of the cultural boundaries between Britain and India. In general,
Parks shows herself very open to Indian culinary culture, and to an extent that sets
her well apart from most other memsahibs of her time. Thus, she develops a taste
for exotic Indian flavours,72 and in the house of her friend Colonel Gardner, she
even comes to prefer Indian dishes to European ones:

The dinners at first consisted of European, as well as native dishes; but the latter were
so excellent, I soon found it impossible to partake of dishes dressed after the English
fashion; and as all the guests were of the same opinion, Colonel Gardner had the
kindness to banish European dishes from the table.73

Regardless of the cultural or ideological implications excluding European eating

culture from the table might have, Parks here apparently favours Indian food quite
simply for its taste. Although relishing Indian food, however, she still moves within
a pointedly European frame of reference. On another occasion, Parks host, Colonel
Gardners begum, professes herself appalled to nd that she cannot provide her
European guest with knife and fork. Parks reaction is composed but revealing:
I assured her my fingers were more useful than forks. She sent me a large dish, well
filled. I bowed over it, saying in an undertone to myself, Jupiter omnipotens
digitos dedit ante bidentes. The begum explained to the guests, English ladies
always say grace before meals. I boldly dipped my fingers into the dish, and con-
trived to appease my hunger very comfortably, much to the amusement of the
Asiatic ladies: but I found I could not get my fingers half so far into my mouth as
they contrived to do; certainly the mode is ungraceful, but this may be prejudice.74

Parks here reacts with her typical adaptability, since she quickly adjusts to the poten-
tially embarrassing situation. To some extent, then, she shows herself disposed to go
beyond the cultural boundaries of Indian and European eating habits. Yet, she does
not leave these boundaries completely behind, immersing herself into India only to
some degree. The apposition ungraceful may well be read as a synonym for unciv-
ilized, and Parks only hesitantly questions her own reticence concerning the practice
of eating with the hands. Like Parks sceptical concluding remark, her self-ironic Latin
commentalmighty Jupiter gave us ngers before forksreinforces the boundaries
between self and other again: it creates an ironic distance between her own cultural
identity, epitomized by Latin as quintessentially European language, and the foreign
practice she adopts here. However, when the begum, who does not know Latin,
explains Parks comment to her guests as saying grace, this comic misreading exem-
plies the prerequisite of successful intercultural communication: if both parties share

72
For instance, she enjoys the chutney Gardner sends her from Lucknowthe very beau ideal of mixtures of
sharp, bitter, sour, sweet, hot, and cold! (Parks, I:238).
73
Ibid., I:393. William Linnaeus Gardner was an American of loyalist descent who had left America after the War
of Independence in order to complete his education in Holland and France. Then he sailed to India to make his
fortune, married a Mughal princess and established a large multicultural household (see Dalrymple, xiii).
74
Parks, I:4334.
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 479

a good-natured preparation to adopt the standpoint of the other, while not entirely
giving up their own position, slight misunderstandings do not really matter. This is
exactly what both sides do here, and how Fanny Parks usually proceeds in her dealings
with India.
In the context of Indian culinary culture, Fanny Parks becomes acutely aware of
food as a means of social distinction, and she employs this means in her own self-
construction. When she and her husband are dining with Colonel Gardner, something
unusual happens:

During the repast, two dishes were sent over from the Begam, in compliment to her
guests, which I was particularly desired to taste, as the Timoorian ladies pride them-
selves on their cookery, and on particular occasions will superintend the making of
the dishes. these dishes were so very unlike, and so superior to any food I had ever
tasted, that I never failed afterwards to partake of any dish when it was brought to
me, with the mysterious whisper, It came from within. It would be incorrect to
say, The Begam has sent it; It came from within, being perfectly understood
by the initiated.75

In this scene, Parks portrays herself as singled out in a twofold way from other Eur-
opeans. First of all, she describes how the begum honours her by sending special
food from the zenana, a symbolic practice that is an act of distinction in itself. And
secondly, Parks takes care to emphasize how this act of distinction initiates her into
the community of those who are familiar with this practice. A similar scene occurs
later on during a wedding, where Parks again adopts Indian culinary habits in the
widest sense:
I had eaten nothing during the night but cardamums and betel-nut: had smoked a
little of Colonel Gardners hooqu [hookah, C.L.], and had drank [sic] nothing but
tea. Mr. Gardner prepared some pan for me in a particular fashion: I ate it, and
found it very refreshing. I was quite fresh and free from headache: had I sat up
all night in England, where we eat supper, it would have made me ill. Colonel
Gardner came in to breakfast, and kissing me on the forehead, said, Mera beti
(my child), you are less fatigued than any one.76

Parks here not only depicts Indian culinary habits explicitly as more wholesome than
British ones, but once more highlights how her afnity with these makes her special.
Again, someone conrms her special status: Colonel Gardners kissing her and calling
her mera beti in Hindustani can be read as a solemn symbolic gesture of receiving
her into a hybrid cultural sphere which he himself had entered through his marriage
with an Indian princess.77 The fact that Parks describes how she consumes and
approves of paan (pieces of areca nut and lime paste wrapped in betel leaf) is especially

75
Ibid., I:382.
76
Ibid., I:4456.
77
According to Nandini Sengupta, for Parks Colonel Gardner was a link to a world she was extremely eager to
experience (106).
480 C. Lusin
signicant. Most Britons disliked its bitter taste (if they tried it at all) and considered
the habit of chewing paan a deplorable sign of Indianization in a European. Earlier,
Parks had quoted bits of a letter from a friend who expressed contempt at a Eurasian
begum chewing it: Poor thing, I felt ashamed of the circumstance, when I saw her
chewing pn with all the gusto of a regular Hindostanee [sic].78 Thus, Parks later
implicitly contrasts the conventional, prejudiced attitude of her friend with her own,
more open-minded outlook.79 Where collective identity is concerned, then, she uses
references to culinary culture less to stress her Britishness, but rather employs them
to demonstrate her special attraction to India, foregrounding how Indians like the
begum confirm and strengthen this affinity.80
In spite of her openness towards Indian habits and practices, however, Fanny Parks
always sticks to British notions of what is eatable, moving within a distinctly European
frame of reference. Her remarks on locusts highlight her peculiar strategies of coming
to terms with Indias strangeness especially well. When clouds of locusts descend on
the country, she notes with her typical inquisitiveness how the natives consider
them a delicacy. Yet, when faced with a portion of roasted ones for trial, she cannot
bring herself to taste them.81 Instead of eating the locusts, she pickles some in arsenical
soap for their biological interest, adding them to her extensive collection of curios-
ities.82 Beyond being a means of collecting curia, this method of preserving bizarre
creatures in bottles can be considered a strategy of asserting control over Indias stran-
geness. Putting the creatures doused in poison in bottles, she manages to contain them
within strictly limited spatial boundaries. Secondly, Parks follows up her locust story
with a self-ironic comment on her scientific interest:

The food of St John in the wilderness was locusts and wild honey: very luxurious fare,
according to the natives. Some assert that St. John did not live upon locusts, but
upon the bean of a tree called by the Arabs Kharroub, the locust-tree of Scripture
a point too difficult to be decided by a poor haji in search of the picturesque.83

Drawing on the story of St John the Baptist and on a scientic explanation, Parks the
amateur scientist contrives in a clever double move to position her strange experiences

78
Parks, I:90.
79
Sara Mills misattributes this arrogant statement to Parks herself and hence arrives at an entirely different
conclusion:
This is a complex statement, since she sees this woman very much as an Englishwoman, despite the
fact that she is of mixed parentagehere she expresses her distaste at the superimposition of various
cultural normsa seemingly white woman who is behaving in the manner of an Indian woman.
Thus, her accounts of Indian women, while sometimes seeming sympathetic, are very much in line
with conventional imperial views, stressing their beauty and at the same time their degraded con-
dition. (45)
80
Parks describes how Indians honour her by providing her with food also on more simple occasions, for instance
when a native gentleman sends them some ready-dressed native dishes (I:65), upon their arrival at Sahseram.
81
Parks, I:288.
82
Ibid., I:240.
83
Ibid.
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 481

with the locusts in a European frame of reference and to justify rejecting them as unsui-
table foodstuff. Ultimately, then, though admitting cultural transgressions to a con-
siderable extent, Parks keeps up the physical as well as the cultural boundaries
between British self and Indian other.
Where Fanny Parks enjoyed BritishIndian commensality on an informal, personal
basis, Emily Eden had to play the part assigned to her in the ritualized demonstrations
of goodwill and power which the ceremonial forms of commensality between the Gov-
ernor-General and native rulers involved. Due to her official status during the govern-
mental progress she describes in Up the Country, the majority of food references
relate to the symbolic role of food in BritishIndian relations. Likewise, Up the
Country shows commensality among Anglo-Indians exclusively in terms of official, for-
malized receptions. Despite her representative role, though, Emily Eden harshly criti-
cized British rule in India. Remarks about uniform, dull and endless dinners are a
leitmotiv of her letters,84 and the conversation apparently did not alleviate the boring
routine. As Eden sarcastically notes: Luckily the band plays all through dinner, and
drowns the conversation (701). Commensality is here relegated primarily to an
endless row of dinners that hold little meaning beyond their representative function,
which represents an implicit criticism of governing practices. In fact, Eden voices her dis-
taste for the exigencies of her representative role largely through criticizing the culinary
practices involved in it. After a Rajah has received the Governor-General, for instance,
she laconically reports: The dinner would have been eatable only he [Lord Auck-
land] was on so high a chair that he never could pick up a morsel from the table (376).
This symbolic demonstration of prestige defies any practical purpose: due to his top hier-
archical position, Lord Auckland is placed so high that he virtually cannot reach down.
In this way, she exposes conventionalized symbolic expressions of prestige as hollow at
the core and ridiculously incompatible with real life. Thus, Eden draws on culinary prac-
tices incorporated into the protocol in order to critique the emptiness and absurdity of
reciprocal British and Indian demonstrations of respect and power.85
Referring to culinary culture, Emily Eden astonishingly criticizes not only British
ruling practices, but also the British involvement in India as a whole. On one occasion,
for instance, the Edens dine in a beautiful mosque. Although the mosque is already
desecrated, Eden feels uncomfortably reminded of Muslim notions of cleanliness:
Still I thought it was rather shocking our eating ham and drinking wine in it, but
its old red arches looked very handsome (362). Even if she immediately glosses
over her discomfort by an aesthetic observation, she implicitly criticizes the

84
We have taken a hideous drive this evening over some brown plains, and have twenty-six people to dinner, I
grieve to say (Emily Eden, Up the Country, 12). With hindsight on the next day, she notes: A dull dinner, very!
(ibid.). On another occasion, she complains: When the dinner was overand I have every reason to believe it did
finish at last, though I cannot think I lived to see itwe all went to the ball the regiment gave us. The ball was
just like the others, but with a great display of plate at supper, and the rooms looked smarter (ibid., 93).
85
Jo Robertson argues more reticently that Emily Eden was somewhat embarrassed about the ostentatious style of
her journey, but does not touch upon the role of food (Robertson, 112).
482 C. Lusin
insensibility of those who planned the dinner. Describing a similar episode, a picnic in
a temple, Eden ends on an even harsher note:

Twenty years ago no European had ever been here, and there we were eating
Salmon from Scotland, and sardines from the Mediterranean, and observing that
St. Cloups potage la Julienne was perhaps better than his other soups, and that
some of the ladies sleeves were perhaps too tight according to the overland
fashions and all this in the face of those high hills, some of which have
remained untrodden since the creation, and we, 105 Europeans, being sur-
rounded by at least 3,000 mountaineers, who looked on at what we call our
polite amusements, and bowed to the ground if a European came near them. I
sometimes wonder they do not cut all our heads off, and say nothing more
about it. (2934)

In this powerful passage, the Scottish salmon, Mediterranean sardines and French soup
represent a particularly civilized kind of European food. Yet, they contrast with their
surroundings in a way that makes them appear completely out of place. Instead of
employing European food conventionally as a symbol of civilization in order to cri-
tique its allegedly uncivilized counterpart, Eden directs her criticism against an over-
sophisticated civilization articially imposed on an ancient culture to which it is
entirely unsuited. As pars pro toto for the British colonial civilizing venture, these
food references symbolize its utter absurdity and its complete, even sacrilegious disre-
gard for the realities of the country.
In fact, Emily Eden uses food references several times to illustrate how out of place she
considers Britonsor more generally Europeansto be in India. In this context, the
French cook St Cloup functions as a central reference point. In one scene, Eden
quotes his views on India, which he put forward in reaction to her praise for his cooking:

Si Madame est contente, il ny a rien dire, et assurment je fais de mon mieux, mais
enfin quest ce quil y a?pas de lgumes, pas de fruit; il ne faut pas tuer un boeuf,
cause de la religion de ces maudits Sikhs; enfin jai de la poussire pour sauce. (203)

Acknowledging Edens praise, St Cloup shows himself desperate at his culinary efforts
being thwarted, as there are no vegetables, no fruit, and one must not kill cattle. Sar-
castically, he adds that he at least has dust for a sauce, concluding: Mon Dieu, quel
pays! (My god, what a country!) (203). In a way, Eden thus employs St Cloup to
voice her own concerns. In this regard, it is crucial that she renders his indignant out-
burst in the original French. In point of fact, the Edens probably recruited a French
cook to build up a civilized existence for themselves in India. However, the use
of French makes St Cloup appear even more out of place here, and as lingua franca
of Europes social elite, his French adds to the absurd contrast between Europe and
India.
At the same time, St Cloup represents a comic perspectival filter whose employment
is one of Emily Edens strategies to contain her Indian experiences in writing. Refer-
ences to St Cloup perfectly exhibit her characteristic style, an Austenesque irony
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 483
86
verging on the grotesque. In another scene involving St Cloup, Eden thus envisions a
very peculiar way of civilizing India, and quite an unorthodox ingredient for his pot.
Describing an encounter with a native ruler, she muses:

I fancied the Rajah smelt very strongly of green fat, and as it was past eight, and we
are used to early dinners in camp, I thought in my hunger, what a pity it was that we
had not brought St. Cloup, who in half-an-hour would have warmed the rajah [sic]
up into excellent turtle soup. (356)

In Edens account, St Cloup epitomizes the absurdity of her situation. At the same
time, though, anecdotal references to him enable her to take the edge off her Indian
experiencesin this case, her disgust with the rajahs smell. When she imagines con-
suming the rajah as turtle soup, Eden inverts her general reluctance to incorporate food
offered to her ceremoniously by Indians as part of the ofcial protocol. Regarding the
universal functions of culinary culture, this fancy comically illustrates the nature of
cooking as a civilizing process.87
As the Governor-Generals First Lady, Emily Eden had to take part in the eating
practices involved in the official protocol herself, and her attitude towards these fore-
grounds her chief concern in her dealings with India: to keep her distance. In this
context, it is illuminating to take another look at Fanny Edens writings, which
exploit the same subject matter. Fanny Eden notes in her diary:

That Oude cook will be the death of me. He sends in about twelve dishes every day at
breakfast and stands by with his satellites to see that we eat them. I happen to hold
Hindustani cookery in horror. George tastes them all handsomely as a Governor-
General should do and the old khansama always insists upon my taking some and
chuckles behind his long white beard in most inhuman manner as he sees my
sufferings.88

Here, Fanny Eden summarizes several aspects of the ofcial protocol pertinent to her
sisters culinary experiences, too. Despite their distaste for Indian cuisine, they must
comply with the rules of this symbolic practice and consume the food. In this
context, Fanny Edens reference to the Governor-General highlights the contrast
between her own reluctance to observe the protocol and her brothers elegant compli-
ance.89 Emily Edens description of an almost identical occasion, however, is much
more subversive. In contrast to her sister, Emily relates how instead of consuming

86
Judith Plotz (163) has drawn attention to the fact that criticism has then and now considered Emily Eden, who
wrote and published two novels, as a Jane Austen substitute.
87
Lupton goes as far as to argue that cooking represents a civilizing process in moral terms, transferring raw
matter from nature to the state of culture, and thereby taming and domesticating it (2).
88
Fanny Eden, 96.
89
See also the following passage from Fanny Eden, where she humorously refers to the clash between symbolic
expression and reality: to my dismay Macnaghten [the Political Secretary, C.L.] handed me across an enormous
plate of buttered rolls and said, The Heir Apparent expressed the delight it will give him, if you will honour him by
eating these. I looked at his sword and dagger and began immediately (Fanny Eden, 101).
484 C. Lusin
the food and drink that the Sikh ruler Runjeet Singh ceremoniously offers her and
Fanny, they tactfully manage to dispose of them:
[W]e contrived to empty the glass on the carpet occasionally. That carpet must have
presented a horrible scene when we went. I know that under my own chair
I deposited two broiled quails, an apple, a pear, a great lump of sweetmeat, and
some pomegranate seeds, which Runjeet gave me with his dirty fingers into my
hand, which, of course, became equally dirty at last. (219)

In this passage, albeit in a very humorous vein, Eden leaves no doubt that she considers
contact with India as tainting, and that she is intent on keeping her distance from it as
much as the exigencies of protocol allow. This ties in closely with her fear of aging,
decay and death.90
The fear of aging, physical decay and death represents Emily Edens most pervasive
preoccupation in Up the Country, and one she voices referring to culinary culture.
Feeling herself age rapidly and prematurely in India, she again and again addresses
this topic. When the party finally reach the cool and beautiful hill-station Simla,
this comes as an immense relief after the immense heat of the plain. Yet, Eden sar-
castically notes: like meat, we keep better here (129). Drawing on the simile of meat
preserved better in the cool mountain air, Eden reduces herself and her companions
to mere physical substance.91 This highlights the necessity of protecting the body
from decay, but it also suggests a complete absence of any metaphysical dimension
and justification for the colonial venture. Later, Eden continues this line of thought,
reflecting that it would be clever, even now, to have ourselves put up in tin and
soldered, till it is time to go home. We should alter no more (184). In this potent
metaphor, she radically foregrounds the physicality of her Indian experience. At
the same time, Eden pushes the connection of food, cultural boundaries and identity
to its most extreme, desiring to virtually seal off the self from the other. Although the
vehicle of this metaphor could stem from clothing put up in tins to keep it dry, it
could as well refer to tinned food. With hindsight, at any rate, it seems ironically
apt that the Governor-Generals First Lady, one of British Indias most civilized
bodies, should imagine herself as tinned food, one of the symbols of Britishness in
that alien country.

Conclusion: Grotesque Bodies, Civilization and Britishness

Regarding the functions of culinary culture, British India turns out to be an area that
epitomizes the supposition that life can be understood through food.92 Anglo-
Indian culinary culture potently highlights the cultural significance of food, its

90
For a more extensive analysis of these motifs in Up the Country see Robertson.
91
See also Pablo Mukherjee, according to whom this passage shows how, in her mind, India is forever associated
with the stripping bare of all humanity down to the basic fact of bodily decay (36).
92
Counihan and van Esterik, 1.
 Anglo-Indian Life-Writing 485

symbolic meaning as well as its intricate connection with social or cultural boundaries
and collective identity. In this context, Anglo-Indian life-narratives not only reflect, but
refine the signifying functions of culinary culture. In these texts, references to food
often operate on an abstract, metaphorical level. They are closely associated with the
relationship of self and other, and typically exemplify the authors attitude towards
Anglo-Indian society or India in general.
Investigating the connection of food, cultural boundaries and identity in Anglo-
Indian life-writing provides a versatile and differentiated tool for revealing the com-
plexities and ambivalences of these texts. In Wanderings of a Pilgrim and Up the
Country, the ways in which the authors refer to culinary culture confirm the
impression of Fanny Parks as a grotesque and Emily Eden as a civilized body
only partly. At first glance, the references to culinary culture support the clear-cut
dichotomy in which Parks enthusiastically commits herself to India, whereas Eden is
intent on shutting herself off from Indian influences. At a second glance, though, it
turns out that their attitudes in fact converge to some extent. Eden is by no means
as conventional as she appears to be, and Parks does not completely transcend the
boundaries between self and other. Whether Parks collects curiosities, comments on
Indian table manners in Latin, or apprehends a plague of locusts with the Bible, her
self-positioning as a connoisseur of India still remains a profoundly European one.
Even when she engages in Indian practices, Parks does this from the standpoint of
what would be considered a civilized practice in Britain. Even if she outwardly trans-
cends British attitudes, norms and practices, the grotesque body Fanny Parks
remains a civilized one inwardly. With Emily Eden, in contrast, the opposite is the
case. Outwardly, Eden conforms to British norms, attitudes and practices, fulfilling
the demands of her official role as a quintessentially civilized body. Yet, inwardly
she proves a grotesque body in so far as she harshly criticizes British ruling practices
and the British involvement in India, subverting these practices whenever possible.
Actually, Eden uses the literary mode of the grotesque as a key device in her critique.
Incongruity, the hallmark of this mode, represents the key feature in Edens depictions
of India, be it in the contrast of reality and appearance, of modern European cooking
and the age-old Indian landscape, or in the fancy of turning a Rajah into turtle soup.
In Britain, the former colonizers attitude towards Indian food has by now changed
completely, and Indian food has become an important part of British cultural identity.
Even today, Anglo-Indian society is in Britains cultural memory closely identified with
its endemic culinary culture. As the British-born poet Daljit Nagra has it in This Be
the Pukka Verse, published in December 2009:Tromping home trumpshere
come the cummerbund/sahibs tipsy with stiff upper lips/for burra pegs of brandy
pawnee/pink gin on six-meal days with tiffin and peacocks 93
Considering the functions of culinary culture in British India, it seems ironical that
the unofficial song of Englands 1998 World Cup team should have been called

93
Nagra, 21.
486 C. Lusin
Vindaloo, and that chicken tikka masala has become one of Englands most popular
dishes.94 Recently, chicken tikka was even included in British army ration packs as an
especially homey meal.95 The popularity of Indian (or mock-Indian96) food indicates
how strongly British cultural identity is still infused with the countrys colonial heri-
tage. Again, it seems, Indian culinary culture plays an important role in the construc-
tion of British cultural identity, but this time very much in the affirmative. In fact, in
July 2010 a commentary in The Independent sized up Prime Minister David Camerons
political qualities by his presumed (in)capacity to take in a properly hot Indian curry.
For the commentator, that is, Camerons faux pas of taking a hot dog plain bespoke a
more overarching deficiency: The fact is, were being lead by a man who cant take his
mustard, and who probably has chicken korma if hes forced to go for a curry. Britains
doomed.97

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