In this episode, Gastronomica’s James Farrer talks with sociologist Pooja Kalita about gender and the labor of food provisioning in Assam, India. Taking the case of pithas – the steamed or fried rice cakes and roasted rice flour rolls that have been traditionally prepared by women – Pooja explores how men became involved in making and selling this everyday food item in the urban marketplace.
A still from the movie “Day One”
GUWAHATI: Whenever someone speaks about lack of living spaces, the first cities that come to one’s mind are Mumbai and Delhi. A major reason for this is that these are the places that have been portrayed in most movies and as such, similar issues in other cities never get highlighted.
To showcase urban space issues that small cities like Guwahati face, a filmmaker and social scientist have come together to make a movie “Day One” to highlight urban housing problems and space inadequacies here.
The film has been made as part of the Nagari Film Competition, an annual contest designed to guide and develop movies that focus on urban issues that are specific to Indian cities. The six-and-a-half minute film has been commissioned by Charles Correa Foundation, which works on education and research in human settlements, Mukul Haloi, an Indian filmmaker based in Assam’s Nalbari, and Pooja Kalita, a PhD scholar of South Asian University’s d