THE POLITICS OF CUISINE: PORTRAYAL OF FOOD CULTURE IN THE CARTOONS OF TOMS

Culture is a way of living encoded in dress, food, religion, values, and more subjectively practised in a human society. As a medium of portraying the everyday cultural and social happenings in the society, cartoons serve as a subtle and satiric critique of the same. Cuisine is a multisensory experience, inevitable as a daily need but often undervalued in the semiotic signification it entails. Food defines communal as well as territorial or regional identity. It is a potent symbol of the dynamics of gender, space, and identity. The social, cultural, and economic aspects of a society influence the food the people eat. This aspect of food is evaluated in this paper as reflected in the cartoons of Cartoonist Toms. Toms covered a period of five decades in the cartoon sector of Kerala during the second half of the twentieth century with his social cartoon series, “Bobanum Moliyum”. Cooking is often presented either as a cumbersome task for women homemakers or as an essential part of the job of housemaids. The multitude of activities involved in the production of the final edible product has a direct association with the multi-layered politics within the society. The relevance of studying the culinary culture of a society is that food practices play a certain crucial role in understanding its culture in a varied perspective.