Preserved Fish Is Both Everywhere and Nowhere

Dried fish — whether it is shutki in Bengal, karati/bordia/lashim in Assam, sukhua in Odisha, endu chepalu in Andhra, karuvadu in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, or sukat macchi in Maharashtra — remains on the margins of the culinary narrative of the country. Through the example of preserved fish, Sohel Sarkar explores the ‘social hierarchy of taste’ and the ways it plays out in communities.

Like most of my early gastronomic experiences, I was introduced to the joys of preserved fish by my grandmother. The first time I tasted her shutki maach baata — dried fish mashed and loaded with green chillies, onions, garlic, and cooked in a generous amount of mustard oil — I must have been about twelve. I was under the impression that I had shed the zero spice tolerance of my childhood years. But one bite of this fiery red mash, diluted with a copious helping of rice, and there were fluids gushing out of facial orifices I did not know I had. I also could not stop eating.

As longtime lovers and occasional dabblers in shutki will tell you, its allure lies not only in its distinctive umami taste, but also in its smell. To those devoted to this acquired taste, its characteristic pungent smell is what makes the dish. Some believe that the smell lingers only while cooking, and is subdued by the time the final dish arrives on the plate. Others disagree but will finish every last bite anyway. And to those who are unfamiliar with it, the smell can be both overpowering and unpleasant. The handful of times my grandma cooked it, she kept the windows tightly shut. But smells are hardly contained in that way, and a few casually-slipped-in complaints from a neighbour ensured that I never saw her fiery red bowl of shutki again. I was reminded of this recently when the popular food blogger duo of Bong Eats said they were forced to take down at least 50 vile comments that were posted on their YouTube channel for uploading a recipe of shutki. They were also subjected to similar hate comments for posting recipes of beef.

The Social Hierarchy of Taste

The aggression or disdain against certain foods and cuisines is neither new nor surprising. In India, religion, ethnicity, caste and class associations of a food have always determined its acceptance into mainstream narratives of a national cuisine. The foods of historically marginalised communities in particular have not only been excluded from these narratives, but have also been treated as grounds for derision, if not outright hate. “Food is not just food on a plate in a country like India, where people are lynched for what they eat,” says anthropologist Dolly Kikon. In The Ethnic Restaurateur, food studies scholar Krishnendu Ray describes a ‘social hierarchy of taste’ that places the cuisines of dominant groups on top while relegating the foods of communities with little social, cultural and economic capital at the bottom. While Ray’s work investigates why Indian, Chinese, Mexican and other so-called ‘ethnic cuisines’ remain marginalised in the white American culinary imagination, a similar dynamic governs the place of regional or hyperlocal cuisines in India’s culinary hierarchy as well. The vitriol directed at the Bong Eats’ shutki recipe, or my grandmother’s truncated shutki escapades, is a reflection of this social hierarchy of taste.

And yet, preserved fish is ubiquitous in cuisines across the subcontinent. Whether it is fishing communities of riverine Bengal and Bangladesh, or the multitude of cuisines scattered along India’s 6,000-kilometre-long coastline, or indigenous groups in the northeastern states, the wide range of preservation techniques, cooking styles and eating practices should be enough to dispel the myth of preserved fish as marginal to the nation. Besides shutki in Bengal, there is karati/bordia/lashim in Assam, sukhua in Odisha, endu chepalu in Andhra, karuvadu in Kerala and Tamil Nadu, and sukat macchi in Maharashtra. Dried and salted fish is also used in Konkani, Malvani, Goan, and Kashmiri cuisines. Hop across to India’s northeastern states, and fermented fish is an integral part of eating cultures.

In West Bengal, as with other coastal communities across India, most varieties of fish are preserved through dehydration, says food researcher and corporate lawyer Sanhita Dasgupta-Sensarma who runs the delivery kitchen Gusto by Sanhita. In the Bengali culinary lexicon, shutki is the catch-all term for all forms of preserved fish. The relatively common punti (pool barb) shutki, loita (Bombay duck) shutki, chingri (prawn) shutki as well as the rarer pabda (Indian catfish) shutki and bashpata (kajoli) shutki are preserved by cleaning the fish, lining them across a bamboo structure resembling a clothesline, and leaving them to dry under the sun. A few varieties also go through a salting process.

Variations of Preserved Fish from Around the Country

While dried fish is common to both West Bengal and Bangladesh, what is endemic to the erstwhile East Bengal is shidol — fermented fish made exclusively with punti. To prepare shidol, the raw fish is cleaned and sundried, smeared with the oil extracted from fish entrails, and packed into earthen pots pre-seasoned with mustard oil to control external moisture, Dasgupta-Sensarma explains. The pots are then sealed and kept underground to ferment for three to four months. In contrast to this salt-free fermentation, nona ilish — the word ‘nona’ translates into salty — is made by dry brining ilish (or hilsa). The whole fish is gutted and cleaned, sliced into oblong shapes, smeared with turmeric, rock salt and fat from the entrails, and left to cure in earthen pots. The prevalence of high quality ilish makes nona primarily a Bangladeshi delicacy, though a lower-grade version is made in West Bengal with small ilish, barely 200 or 300 grams each. With the wealth of ilish that comes from the Mahanadi, ilishi sukhua (dry hilsa) and luni ilishi (salted hilsa) are beloved delicacies in Odisha as well, says food historian and development professional Tanushree Bhowmik who runs the blog Fork Tales.

Fermentation also takes precedence in India’s northeastern region. The process of fermenting fish varies not only from one state to another but also between communities in the same state, says food blogger-turned-foodpreneur Pushpita Aheibam. The nomenclature varies accordingly. What is hidol in Assam, is berma in Tripura, tungtap among the Khasis and nakham among the Garo community in Meghalaya, and ngari in Manipur. While ngari, which is prepared roughly the same way as shidol, is commercially available across the northeast, the lesser-known hengtak is a common household preparation in Manipur, Aheibam explains. It is made with a mix of different fish such phabounga (punti), ngasang, muka nga (mola carplet), ngakha (two spot barb or chena punti) which are sundried and powdered with an equal quantity of sundried petioles of hongu (giant taro leaves) and a local variety of small onions. The mixture is kneaded, shaped into balls and left to ferment in an earthen pot for fifteen to twenty days. Utonga kupsu, made by the Meitei community of Assam’s Cachar district, is similar to hentak except for the mustard oil that is added to the mixture of dried fish and hongu and also used to season the pot ahead of fermentation. In Meghalaya, the Garo community will typically pound the salted and dried fish, plug it into the hollow of a bamboo, seal it with a banana leaf, and leave it to ferment, says Nambie Marak who documents cuisines from across the northeast on her YouTube channel Eat Your Kappa. The final product is soft and dry and is typically used as a flavouring agent. The same process can also be used to ferment whole or chopped fish, in which case solid chunks of fish are added to curries.

When I ask Marak about Garo recipes that use fermented fish, she tells me they’re prolific enough to be nameless. “Anything and everything works with fermented fish. We might cook it with roselle or papaya. When they are in season, we roast and pound tomarillos with roasted fermented fish, add salt and as many chillies as we want. That’s one of the simplest ways of eating fermented fish. My father will just fry the fermented fish in mustard oil, add a little bit of salt and eat it like a chutney with plain rice. At Garo weddings, you will always find at least one dish with dry fermented fish,” she tells me over the phone. Dried fish also features in the wedding rituals of Meghalaya’s Khasi community. During the ceremony, the officiating elder pours a fermented liquor on three pieces of dried fish which are later tied to a ridge pole in the couple’s home and brought down only after they bear children, Sharmila Das Talukdar writes in Khasi Cultural Resistance to Colonialism.

In keeping with the practice of zero-oil cooking across northeastern cuisines, fermented fish is seasoned almost exclusively with fresh herbs. Tripura’s fermented fish delicacy gudok is similar to the Manipuri eromba. In both dishes, roasted, steam cooked or raw berma is boiled with seasonal vegetables. For gudok, the boiled vegetables are mashed and more vegetable stock is added to lend the dish a watery consistency. Most Manipuri homes will combine hentak with green chillies to make a chutney called morok ametpa or use it with seasonal vegetables in a zero-oil stew known as kangshoi, says Aheibam whose food journey reflects her Manipuri ancestry and a childhood divided between Assam and Tripura.

In Bengal, shukti is similarly paired with seasonal vegetables such as pumpkin, brinjal or squash and eaten as a dry relish or a curry. For Bhowmik, the most iconic dish of the cuisine is shidol’er bora — shidol pounded and cooked with garlic, onion, and chillies, wrapped in a pumpkin leaf, and batter fried. Dasgupta-Sensarma’s recipe of kochu’r loti diye luna ilish, which pairs salt cured ilish with kochu’r loti (taro stolons), is a hat-tip to her East Bengali origins and a childhood spent in Agartala, Tripura where nona is known as luna. The umami boost in the dish comes from the glutamate or amino acids in nona’r tel, an oily liquid released during the salt curing process. Nona is an acquired taste and may taste funky to someone who has never tasted it before, Dasgupta-Sensarma says, but “to me, it is glorious”.

Among Tamil Nadu’s coastal communities, karuvadu kuzhambu, a spicy tamarind and coconut-based gravy made with dried and salted ribbon fish, anchovies, catfish, etc, is a much beloved dish. The umami of dried fish gives even the simplest dishes a burst of flavour. Along the border between Kerala and Mangalore, dried and salted fish or prawns are fried and paired with kanji (a rice porridge made with red rice) or cooked in coconut chutney, says Dominique who works in a marketing startup and hails from a fishing community in the region.

side shot of karuvadu thokku — Karuvadu Thokku

What is common to these cuisines is a near-universal way to eat preserved fish: combined with loads of green chillies and paired with rice. Bengal’s fiery shutki bhortas, the Manipuri morok ametpa, and the bombil (Bombay duck) chutney of Maharashtra all follow the adage spicier is better. These economical meals are a powerhouse of umami but, more often than not, they are also a product of necessity. In rural Bengal, for instance, where few can afford an array of dishes, and the need to fill an empty stomach trumps nutrition considerations, a small portion of shutki is enough to polish off a plate of rice, Dasgupta-Sensarma says.

This socio-economic reality perhaps explains why the epithet of ‘poor man’s food’ has firmly attached itself to preserved fish. Bhowmik and Marak reject the moniker when I mention it, detailing multiple categories of preserved fish such as nona ilish which are sold at exorbitant rates, but agree that preserved fish is often entangled in caste, class, religion, ethnicity, migrant status and other socio-economic power relations. Along the Kerala-Mangalore border, it is mostly communities belonging to historically oppressed castes who eat dried and salted fish, says Dominique. “There is a derision towards fishing communities and how they sell the best of their catch and preserve what was remaining and eat it through the weeks and months when there is no catch but I am not sure it's made very obvious,” she adds. In Bangladesh, the vast majority of those who consume shutki or shidol are poor Muslims who belong to rural fishing communities. There is also a gendered hierarchy, Dasgupta-Sensarma weighs in. In many Bengali households, dried fish (like fish bones) is eaten by womenfolk while fresh fish remains reserved for men.

Caste, Class, Religion, Ethnicity and Other Power Relations

It also does not help when certain foods are brought in by migrants, says Bhowmik who is herself a second generation immigrant as her family moved to Kolkata from Dhaka and Sylhet. What Bhowmik is referring to is Bengal’s tense and long-drawn-out history of cross-border migrations that started long before Partition in 1947 and accelerated during the 1971 war that led to the liberation of Bangladesh. In West Bengal, the postwar migrations from opar Bangla (the other side of Bengal) produced anxieties that did not dissipate with the war. Over time, fears that refugees would burden the state’s stretched resources metastasised into disdain for their dialect, accent, and above all else, their food. “The preserved fish eaten by Bengalis who migrated from Sylhet and Chittagong districts of what is now Bangladesh [...] marked us out as ungainly, rustic outsiders — much like our angular Bengali accent — as we ventured out of our tiny outposts in the northeast and into Kolkata,” writes journalist Amrita Dutta. “Its cooking was preceded by nervous shutting of windows and worry at neighbours’ noses wrinkling in disgust.”

A similar derision now awaits indigenous people from the northeastern states who migrate to metropolitan India to work or study. The foods they carry from home often become grounds for harassment by houseowners, neighbours and colleagues. For Kikon, the reality of food as a source of humiliation was brought home when she moved to Delhi from Nagaland as an undergraduate student. “When we passed by a ganda naala (dirty drain) with garbage burning on the side, my friends would jokingly tell me, ‘Look, they’re burning garbage, you must be feeling hungry,’ supposedly a dig at the fermented dry fish I ate,” she recounts in an interview. In her ethnographic work on the centrality of fermented foods to eating cultures across the northeast, Kikon suggests that metropolitan India’s revulsion against ‘smelly’ foods from the northeast may have little to do with smell itself and is rooted in ideas of race and caste and notions of purity and pollution. Smell, in other words, is an excuse to define certain communities as the social ‘other’. Kikon also questions the very premise of what constitutes ‘smelly’ food, arguing that these definitions are put in place by dominant groups who hold the most socio-economic power. She recalls an incident when a woman from a Nepali household in Bagdogra corrected her for using the word smelly for akhuni (fermented soybean). “It is scented, not smelly,” the woman says to emphasise that, for her, the smell of fermented soybeans is in fact delightful. By shifting the lens through which we understand smell, the perception of what is smelly or scented also begins to shift, Kikon implies.

The allure of preserved fish, in any case, lies precisely in its distinctive smell. For those who eat it, the smell of shutki, shidol, ngari and karuvadu evokes an emotional attachment to home and community. For some, it is reminiscent of the food they grew up with, a memory of home away from home. For others, it is the quotidian comfort of food being prepared in the kitchen. For yet others, it is a reminder of the ridicule of neighbours. But for each of them, the practice of eating preserved fish is an integral part of their identity.

In the initial days after Bhowmik’s family moved to Kolkata, when fresh fish to feed the large family would be hard to come by, her Sylheti grandmother would put a little bit of chingri shutki in any curry she was making. “It would add umami, elevate any dish, and a little bit would go a long way,” she says. Growing up in Shillong, Marak remembers all her neighbours eating fermented fish. “I had a Bengali neighbour who didn’t seem to have a problem with what we ate,” she recalls. And yet, in the government quarters she lived in as a child with her parents, she would find herself carefully omitting any mention of fermented fish if anyone asked her what she’d had for lunch. “Back then, it was embarrassing that we didn’t have meat on some days. It was also because of the stigma people attach to eating dried fish,” she says. Now, the love of dried fish is one of the many things she has in common with her Tamil husband who grew up with karuvadu. During her college days in Mumbai, Aheibam found an unlikely candidate to share her love for fermented fish in a classmate from Muscat, Oman. “Fermented fish has a stronger, more pungent flavour compared to dried fish, and for people who have never tried it, it can be quite intimidating,” she says. So when her Omani classmate enthusiastically took to the fermented fish Aheibam surreptitiously cooked in their strictly vegetarian college hostel, that was “a feel-good thing”.

It is in this in-between space, of food as a source of shared identity and bonding on the one hand and as a vehicle for stigma and derision on the other, that we find preserved fish in India. For many communities, its distinctive smell and taste evoke everyday comfort or memories of home. In others who are unfamiliar with it, that same smell and taste may produce discomfort and even aversion. The trouble begins when this aversion is weaponised to ridicule certain food cultures as too ‘smelly’, too unrefined or simply too poor to be acknowledged or made visible in the nation’s culinary imagination. The need to preserve certain foods may have arisen from economic necessity — to avoid wastage and guard against an uncertain future when there may not be enough. Yet the gamut of preservation techniques, cooking styles and recipes for preserved fish, ranging from the most basic to the gourmet, reveal a depth of knowledge, sophistication and improvisation that militate against the reductive categorisation of preserved fish as poor man’s delicacy.

“Food and people’s histories are intertwined,” Kikon writes, “To shame or humiliate the dietary practices of a particular social group is to also shame and humiliate their history.” In recent times, a far more violent and exclusionary form of social othering is manifesting itself in India through the medium of food. The ban on beef in at least twenty-three Indian states, the refusal or reluctance of public schools to serve eggs or food cooked with onion and garlic as part of the mid-day meal, and the enforced vegetarianism across the country are all part of a well-orchestrated and politically-motivated effort to impose a Hindu Brahminical identity and practice as emblematic of the nation. To be sure, the stigmatisation of preserved fish and the ostracisation of meat are mired in somewhat different politics. It may even seem far-fetched to compare the two: one is ridiculed but tolerated, albeit grudgingly and from a great distance, while the other is treated with violent hate. At the core of both, however, is a deliberate desire to vilify certain food cultures, people and communities as irrelevant, unwelcome and invisible to the nation.

Sohel Sarkar is an independent journalist, editor and feminist researcher currently based in Bengaluru. Her work has appeared in Whetstone Journal, Eaten Magazine among others. You can find her on Twitter and Instagram.

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