Do you cook too much?
I AM house-hunting in one of the most aromatic cities in the world.
Every day, 3,20,000 eateries set out to serve 1,00,00,000 people in Bangkok across numerous narrow sois (lanes). The warm scent of kaffir lime, shrimp paste, and fish sauce rises through the air and floats like a piquant cloud over the city. Here, in the culinary capital of South-east Asia, where street food stalls carry Michelin stars, and where one can stick out one’s tongue and taste the fat melting away from meat resting on charcoal grills, I found that real estate agents kept asking me if I cook “too much”.
I pressed for an explanation. “Thai landlords don’t like the smell of Indian food,” I was told. Any declaration of a love for cooking would obviously reduce my prospects as a tenant.
But “Do you cook too much”, as I was soon to learn, was shorthand for something pricklier. It was an admission of discomfort in renting out property to a khek, a Thai homonym that means guest and is a pejorative for dark-skinned South and West Asians. One property agent dispensed with this guile. Following up on a query for an apartment, she messaged: “Are you Indian?” When I confirmed it, her response floating up in a text bubble left me speechless. “Sorry the owner of this property do [sic] not accept Indians.”
The polychromatic commingling that one witnesses in malls and restaurants in touristy Bangkok gets subverted in the discreet residential sois and troks (alleys) of upmarket neighbourhoods. Preferences for tenants are not decided by the colour of their money but by the colour of their skin. Colourism has a long history in Thailand, but like caste in India, it is something people do not want to talk about.
But the slip shows. Repeatedly.
Most explicitly in commercials for cosmetics, where models have been recurrently shown in blackface. In 2016, the Thai skincare company, Seoul Secret, advertised their skin-whitening pill Snowz with the slogan “white makes you win”. The public outrage that followed reached the pages of The New York Times and The Guardian. It called into question the long-standing valorisation of sii khao (white complexion) and the indignity meted out to sii dam (black complexion).
The fetish for whiteness also shapes neighbourhoods in Bangkok.
I fell in love with a quaint apartment in Phrom Pong. The road leading to it was lined with laburnum trees, Thailand’s national flower, in glorious summer bloom, rekindling memories of my neighbourhood in Delhi. The apartment, with its porcelain-tiled flooring and tasteful furniture, had remained unoccupied for almost six months. The landlady had waited, hoping to find one of the most coveted demographics in Bangkok’s rental market, a single Japanese woman or, failing that, a farang—caucasian—girl. COVID-19 travel restrictions had spoiled her chances. “I have never had Indians as tenants before,” she whispered dispiritedly, unsure of how to navigate her second thoughts. The next day, she enquired through her agent: “I hope they don’t cook too often?”
“It’s okay,” I told the apologetic and kind agent, “please tell her we are not interested in the property any more.”
I finally found an apartment in Thong Lor. Unlike the glitzy and neon-wrapped neighbourhood of Phrom Pong and the skyscraper-smothered Asoke, Thong Lor used to be quieter, greener, and more residential, known for its street food. Now, only a handful of vendors remain. In 2017, the Bangkok Metropolitan Administration decided to erase street vendors from all 50 districts in the city in the “interests of cleanliness, safety, and order”. Thong Lor was the first neighbourhood where the axe fell.
A disproportionate number of Bangkok’s street food vendors are dark-skinned rural migrants from the Isaan (north-eastern) region of Thailand and poor immigrants from neighbouring Laos and Myanmar. As soaring upmarket condominiums take over old neighbourhoods, light-skinned upper-middle-class Thais, Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, and Caucasian owners and tenants move in, who order food on apps and eat out in malls. The streets are emptied of dark-skinned migrants who cater to the working class and whose labour earned Bangkok forex and sobriquets such as “Kitchen of the world” and “World’s best street food city”.
As the rental contract was being signed, a particular clause stood out. The tenant, it said, must “not cook foods with a strong lingering smell in the premises [sic]”. We spent a quiet moment, contemplating. A part of us was tired, on the verge of giving up. The other part remained adamant. We wrote a message, urging the agency to remove this discriminatory clause. After a long parley, they relented.
We cooked khichdi that night. The familiar whiff of bay leaf and cumin sauteing in ghee was comforting. I could only hope that some of it wafted out into the rain-washed night sky, joined in with the rest of the smells rising from kitchens in neighbouring homes, and became part of that redolent scent cloud that hangs lovingly over Bangkok. m
1. In The Book of ____, Okakura Kakuzo states that in itself, it is one of the profound universal remedies that two parties could sit down to. He discusses such topics as Zen and Taoism but also the secular aspects of _____ and Japanese life. He goes on to mention that ____ has been the subject of many historical events such as peace treaties. Fill in the blank.
2. In Gauguin’s ______, Van Gogh painted a kind of “portrait” of his then friend and fellow artist Paul Gauguin. It would serve as a pendant piece to a later artwork, simply named Van Gogh’s _____, which was a kind of self-portrait. The symbolism between these two paintings has been discussed at length, while the object representing Van Gogh is simple and unassuming, Gauguin’s version is far more ornate and has a commanding presence. Fill in the blank.
3. Randall Einhorn is an American television cinematographer, director, and producer. Einhorn began his career in the late 1990s, working sporadically as director and cinematographer on several different projects, including Fear Factor, Eco-challenge, and Survivor, for which he was nominated for two Emmy Awards. It was this very same work experience that landed him a job with another award-winning series. Name it.
4. When X began to grow in popularity, its creator Y found himself at odds with the syndicate that urged him to begin merchandising the characters. He refused, believing that the integrity of the art would be undermined by commercialisation, which he saw as a major negative influence, and said that licensing his characters would violate the spirit of his work. He made clear his opposition to creating a plush toy, saying that it would only destroy the magic. Name the creator and his creation.
5. Colonial Bombay saw the rise of Parsi businessmen, many of whom took up family names modelled after the businesses that gave them their wealth and status. For example, the Modis took their surname from their association with the East India factory as stewards and supply agents. Hirji Jivanji, the second of three brothers who were known as Readymoney, was broker to the first mercantile house in India. The X were supply agents and interpreters for the British, French, and Dutch trading companies and took the surname from a nickname given to the founder of the family, Nasarvanji Kavasji, for his slight build. Name X.
6. So far, she has had a total of four facelifts. M.G. Lord, cultural critic and author, believes the third iteration to be the most notable and compares it to a pivotal moment in art history, namely Manet’s “Olympia”, in which the woman is looking straight ahead towards the viewer, as opposed to maintaining a sidelong glance. According to Lord, the third facelift was a bold, shocking development for the time and a reflection of the sexual revolution that was beginning in the 1970s. Who are we talking about?
7. Daina Taimina is a Latvian mathematician, most well-known for discovering a groundbreaking way of modelling hyperbolic planes, which she first developed while sitting by the pool watching her two daughters learn how to swim. The new models made a significant difference, according to her students. They said they “liked the tactile way of exploring hyperbolic geometry” and that it helped them acquire experiences that helped them get better in geometry. What old-fashioned but mathematically sound technique did Daina Taimina use to make the models?
8. Jacques Lecoq was a French stage actor and acting movement coach. He was best known for his teaching methods in physical theatre, movement, and mime. Introduced to them by his mentor Jacques Copeau, Lecoq retained the use of masks as a training tool. The neutral mask was designed to facilitate a state of openness in student-performers, moving gradually on to character and expressive masks, and finally to what he called “the smallest mask in the world”. What was this mask?
9. In archaeology slang, what is a “leaverite” supposed to be?
10. Keri Opai is Maori strategic lead at Te Pou o te Whakaaro Nui, where he guides responsiveness to, and engagement with, Maori people and organisations. As part of a glossary he has produced for the use of Maori language in the mental health, addiction, and disability sectors, Opai coined the term “Takiwatanga”, a derivation of the phrase “in my/their own time and space”. What is this term used to refer to?