Chhaunk, oil infused with different spices, lies at the heart of Indian cooking. It is just a few teaspoons, but it finishes a dish and gives it its particular piquancy. The pieces in this delightful book can be seen as a literary chhaunk – a sprinkling of ideas and arguments around the social sciences, which imparts its own distinct flavour.
Part memoir, part cookbook, Chhaunk playfully uses food to talk about economics, society and India, and makes unexpected connections, say, between savings and shami kebab or between women’s liberation and the Bengali vegetable dish of ghanto.
Abhijit Banerjee, economist and Nobel laureate, loves to cook and feed people, and misses India all the time. This delicious collection of essays – light in style and big on ideas – is his attempt to string the many parts of his eclectic existence together.