The rise of queer food books in India: how kitchens shape identity and belonging

It begins, as many food memories do, in a kitchen. In the recently released biography Chapal Rani: The Last Queen of Bengal (Seagull Books), author Sandip Roy recalls how Chapal Bhaduri, the legendary female impersonator of Bengali jatra folk theatre, lingered in his mother’s kitchen.

Not playing rough with the para (neighbourhood) boys outside, but drawn instead to the rhythms of domesticity: the stirring pot, the clink of bangles against a chopping blade, the quiet choreography of care. Food, for Chapal, was inheritance.