climbing the mango tree... and food memories

Climbing the Mango Tree is a delightful memoir of the author’s childhood in mid-twentieth-century Delhi, India. Madhur Jaffrey’s wealthy family lived in an extended-family compound, and her life was rich in cousins, aunts, and uncles. It was also rich in food, and this book links specific memories with lovingly-described meals, from street food to picnic snacks to full-course dinners that boggle the imagination. Because Jaffrey’s family was of the professional class, their lifestyle blended Hindu traditions (their heritage, to which the family’s women gave primary allegiance), Muslim culture (which the men absorbed in their work), and English customs (again from the men, but also from the children, who attended English schools). This blend worked itself seamlessly into their food, dress, and family culture–until the partition of India in the 1940s disrupted their lives. The book provides a fascinating look at a way of life that will be exotic to many Americans, full of memorable characters and delicious recipes.

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Madhur Jaffrey was born in 1937 into a well-off family in Delhi, India. When she was 19, she went to London to pursue her interest in acting, studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. While there, she missed the food of her youth (she had never done any cooking as a girl), so she wrote to her mother, requesting recipes, and taught herself to cook. After graduating from the RADA, she acted in film, television, and radio productions, marrying an Indian actor. After a move to New York, she began to write food articles, then to host a television program about Indian cooking. She has been the host of three BBC series on Indian food and has published numerous cookbooks. All of her work seeks to put food into the context of regional cultures, educating Westerners about life in India and beyond as she teaches them to cook.

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Discussion Questions
1. How does food help Jaffrey’s family negotiate their mixing of cultures? Does it help create an independent identity for the family?

2. The family’s structure is overtly patriarchal, but the women still seem to inspire strong memories in Jaffrey, and she herself is a strong, independent girl who grows into a distinguished woman. What kind of role models does she see among the women in her family that help her? How do these women function in the family? Does food play a role in their roles?

3. What aspects of the elite Delhi culture that she describes surprise you the most? Which would you find most difficult to negotiate? Why?

4. The family seems to have strong unwritten rules about which foods belong in which settings–what it is appropriate, in other words, to eat at particular times and places. Consider your own unwritten rules about such things, and compare them with others in the group, if you’d like. Why do you think that people develop such customs?

5. Jaffrey seems to have a strong sense of her own family and its identity, even within the extended family living situation. What distinguishes her family, in her mind?

6. How does Jaffrey herself blend cultures into her attitudes and personality?

7. At the book’s end, Jaffrey talks about how the “innocent honey” put on her tongue came as she aged to be “mixed with the pungencies of Indian spices.” What does she mean by that? Do you have a parallel food metaphor, from your own cultural setting, to describe the progress and growing complexity of your life?

there is just ONE book left for the IFPL Book Club...

Kindred by Octavia Butler

join us for the meeting on December 14 @ 7pm

see me if you're interested in the last book!!