Bad Table Manners
Bad Table Manners
Podcast Description
Bad Table Manners pushes the boundaries of food storytelling in South Asia. Despite a universal love of delicious food, South Asian communities’ narratives and food practices maintain social hierarchies, caste inequalities, and racial and gender discrimination. In spanning both “high” and “low” food cultures, this podcast deconstructs monolithic notions of South Asian or “Indian” food by diving into micro contexts of households, restaurants, neighborhoods, streets and communities. It also reveals how hyper-regional and local culinary expressions are shaped by global gastronomic histories and trends.
Hosted by Delhi-based anthropologist Meher Varma, Bad Table Manners is narrator-driven, ethnographic, and playful. It will take you to the seaside, through bustling markets, and the intimacy of the kitchen table in private homes. It reminds you that when good table manners are tossed, great conversation begins.
Bad Table Manners is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Whetstone Radio Collective creates storytelling dedicated to food origins and culture, with original content centering the perspectives of global majority populations and diasporas.
You can learn more about this podcast at whetstoneradio.com, on Twitter @whetstoneradio, on TikTok and Instagram @whetstonemedia and subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channel, Whetstone Media, for more podcast content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at WhetstoneMedia.com.
Podcast Insights
Content Themes
The podcast explores a range of themes including social hierarchies in food culture, regional culinary practices, and political intricacies tied to food. Episodes such as Gardening on Water delve into Kashmir's floating gardens and how they reflect local complexities, while Revolutionary Seed examines the impact of India's farm laws on community solidarity through food.
Bad Table Manners pushes the boundaries of food storytelling in South Asia. Despite a universal love of delicious food, South Asian communities’ narratives and food practices maintain social hierarchies, caste inequalities, and racial and gender discrimination. In spanning both “high” and “low” food cultures, this podcast deconstructs monolithic notions of South Asian or “Indian” food by diving into micro contexts of households, restaurants, neighborhoods, streets and communities. It also reveals how hyper-regional and local culinary expressions are shaped by global gastronomic histories and trends.
Hosted by Delhi-based anthropologist Meher Varma, Bad Table Manners is narrator-driven, ethnographic, and playful. It will take you to the seaside, through bustling markets, and the intimacy of the kitchen table in private homes. It reminds you that when good table manners are tossed, great conversation begins.
Bad Table Manners is part of Whetstone Radio Collective. Whetstone Radio Collective creates storytelling dedicated to food origins and culture, with original content centering the perspectives of global majority populations and diasporas.
You can learn more about this podcast at whetstoneradio.com, on Twitter @whetstoneradio, on TikTok and Instagram @whetstonemedia and subscribe to our Spotify and YouTube channel, Whetstone Media, for more podcast content. You can learn more about all things happening at Whetstone at WhetstoneMedia.com.
What if a simple loaf of bread could tell the story of an entire place, its resilience, its politics and poetry? In this episode of Whetstone Audio Dispatch, host Meher Varma takes us deep into the heart of Srinagar, Kashmir, where the unmistakable aroma of freshly baked tchot leads her to the neighborhood kandur, a traditional bakery that’s far more than just a place to buy bread.
Through conversations with bakers, poets, and everyday customers, we uncover how these bakeries, modest structures built of brick and smoke, have become cornerstones of community life, sacred tradition, and resistance. We meet legendary Zareef Ahmed Zareef, who traces the 4,000-year-old roots of Kashmiri baking, and listen to local myths where mystics emerge from tandoors bejeweled and unburned.
Whether it’s feeding a neighborhood during a curfew, sharing unspoken trust through pay-later systems, or trading morning news, bread becomes a portal into an unseen Kashmir, one where bread is more than sustenance; it is survival, spirit, and social glue.
This episode was made possible by the support of @heirloomcities
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