Cross-cultural capers: When ANZACS dunked chapattis in dal
and curry
Dr Indrani Ganguly
“Sing me to sleep, the bullets fall
Let me forget the war & all
Damp is my dugout, cold is my feet
Nothing but biscuits & bully to eat. “
Let me forget the war & all
Damp is my dugout, cold is my feet
Nothing but biscuits & bully to eat. “
Popular soldier’s song, circa 1918,
recorded in the diary of Archie A. Barwick.
“The Digger sniffed the savoury Sikh curry,
and longed to taste it, but it was no go. One night a few of the boys got into
the Sikh lines, and in some way or other the fingers of one of them were found
in the pot. That settled it. Johnny Sikh gave the whole pot full to the Anzacs,
who didn't forget the good taste for a long time”.
When we think of food in times of war, we usually think of
food shortages and rationing. Sometimes we remember how wartime creates new
national icons like the ANZAC biscuit in Australia. We don’t always think about
how food can bring people of diverse backgrounds together.
April
is the month for commemorating the spirit of the ANZACs. Not many people in
Australia and New Zealand know about the role of the Indian soldiers in World
War 1 both on the battlefield and off it.
Letters from Australian soldiers which are now beginning to
come into the public domain reveal a very unexpected side to the war. The
Australians were often hungry and tired of the monotonous diet of hard biscuits
and bully beef. Some of them found a way to relieve this by developing a taste
for the Indian soldiers’ rations of roti or chapatti (flatbread) and daal
(lentils), both of which were freshly cooked and far more flavoursome than
their own rations.
There is some anecdotal evidence that even the legendary
Australian Anzac John Simpson Kirkpatrick, used to stay with the Indian mule
drivers in the battlefields of Gallipoli and enjoying “chapattis” and freshly
cooked curries or stews flavoured with spices by the Indian cooks.[1]
Some Australian cooks learnt to cook bully beef with curry
powder obtained from the Indian cooks which they served up as curried goose![2]
We don’t know if the culinary camaraderie ever went the
other way. There are stories of an Indian soldier being offered something in
exchange (we don’t know what) but refusing to take anything, simply saying ‘No,
Australian very good'.
We can
guess the Indians of diverse religions (Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Gurkha) would not
eat beef, but it would be interesting to know if they ever tried the ANZAC
biscuits!
[1] Peter Stanley, Die in
Battle, Do Not Despair: The Indians on Gallipoli, 1915, Hellion and
Company, 2015, p 112.
[2] Ibid, p 104.
Comments
Post a Comment