Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood

Fermenting Flavors and Identities in Northeast India

Dolly Kikon

This essay draws from my ethnographic fieldwork in Northeast India and examines how identities are mediated through
fermented food like bamboo shoot. These shoots come in different textures and forms: wet chunky pieces, sun-dried and stringy
threads, smoked and curly strands. Our relationship with fermented food, as this essay highlights, determine how we organize,
move, and order our lives, contributing to the creation of differences and alliances. At a time when we witness a global movement
on fermenting cultures and the microbial world, this essay locates small-scale nonindustrial fermentation practices among
communities across Northeast India. Exploring the significant role of food in shaping taste, practices, and politics on the ground, I
show how fermenting cultures shape citizenship practices and identities. By highlighting narratives and representations of
fermented food, this essay brings the extraordinarily varied and dense worlds of fermenting cultures and highlights the associative
relationship between fermented food and communities.

Bamboo shoot is part of my being. I cannot exist without it. (Zubeno, Wokha District, 2019)

Fermentation and eating fermented food are central to many
communities across Northeast India. From vegetables, beans, fish,
and rice, the cultures of consuming fermented food highlight the
diversity of food traditions here. While processes of fermentation
continue to take place in small-scale nonindustrialized settings
such as kitchens, the promotion of fermented food as a distinct
marker of indigenous cuisine/tribal food from the region is done
at another scale. Across high-dining restaurants in Delhi to pop-
up food cafés in Goa and Mumbai, the magnitude of promoting
fermented food from Northeast India across India is impressive.
In this essay, I focus on fermented bamboo shoot to examine the
associative relationship between fermented food and communi-
ties. Fermented bamboo shoot comes in different textures and
forms—wet chunky pieces, sun-dried and stringy threads, smoked
and curly strands. Simply put, fermented food is a technique of
preserving food to increase its shelf life (Yesudas 2018), yet its
distinct aroma and taste sparks off sensory affects about taste.
Paired with meat, fish, and vegetables across Northeast India, fer-
mented food transforms communities, economies, and identities.
A rich body of research literature focuses on scientific ex-
periments and tests conducted on nonindustrialized forms of
fermentation among indigenous communities. Topics range from
scientific processes of fermentation and microbial diversity (G. Das
et al. 2016; Tamang and Tamang 2009), nutritional and medicinal
values of indigenous practices of fermentation (A. Das and Deka
2012), and nontoxic processes of fermentation that communities
should adopt (Nongdam and Leimapokpam 2014). In this essay,
I examine seemingly ordinary practices and conversations about
fermentation and consumption.
Tracing the everyday fermentation practices and eating cultures
reveals deeper meanings and significance about taste, ethnicity,
gender, and social relations. The importance of fermented food
across different cultures, according to Mintz, informs us how
flavors and mastering the art of fermentation are integral to the
social world of the fermenters and consumers of respective so-
cieties. It is, as Mintz (2008) reflects, “a fabric of cultivation,
processing, kitchen lore, cuisine and folklore in which people
learn from infancy about the foods they grow to like. Tastes are
more commonly acquired in this way” (64). Highlighting non-
industrialized forms of fermentation in Northeast India, this
essay examines how making and eating fermented food draws in
debates about flavor and taste, but also about new practices of
differences and alliances.
Our relationship with microbes determines how we organize,
move, and order our lives, including values, knowledge, and
memories about communities. Known as tama in Nepali, khorisa
in Assamese, lung seij in Khasi, and soidon in Meiteilon, the
knowledge and fermentation practices of bamboo shoot among
eastern Himalayan societies are layered and complex (see Tamuli
2017). In addition, communities are also named after fermented
food. For instance, the Lotha Naga tribe of Nagaland also call
themselves Rhuchak Etsoi (fermented bamboo shoot eaters). As
it turns out, the methods of preparing fermented bamboo shoot
are similar across communities, but nuances such as the types of
wares or processes of fermenting and consuming are employed
to create distinct accounts of community histories including
gender relations and social practices. These accounts offer us
insights about indigenous skills and knowledge and invite us to

Dolly Kikon is Senior Lecturer in Development Studies in the Department of Social and Political Sciences of the University of Melbourne
(04, E 465, John Medley Building, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia [dolly.kikon@unimelb.edu.au]). This paper was submitted 6 VI 20,
accepted 18 III 21, and electronically published 21 IX 21.

Current Anthropology, volume 62, supplement 24, October 2021. q 2021 The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. Published by
The University of Chicago Press for The Wenner‐Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. https://doi.org/10.1086/715830
Kikon Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood
consider the place of fermented food, as markers of differences
and belonging simultaneously.
Identities and cultures are constantly mediated through food
(Kikon 2017; Ray 2016). The senses of smell, touch, taste, sight,
and hearing create a hierarchy of values (Classen 2001). However,
these sensory values must be contextualized. What is considered
as stinky and associated as disgusting might be construed as
pleasant and bestowed with a taste of home and culture or even
sacredness. Smell is deeply entangled with aesthetics and the
pleasure of the senses, thereby creating an authoritative category
about what constitutes odor, stinky, and smelly (McHugh 2012).
Smell matters when it comes to fermented food like bamboo
shoot. If the allures of eating and experiencing taste are about
stimulating the sense of smell, fermented bamboo shoot invokes
an emotional attachment to home and community.
Experiences of smell (tasty/disgusting) powerfully shape citi-
zenship practices in India. At a time when we witness a global
movement on fermented food and the microbial world, this essay
locates small-scale nonindustrial fermentation practices among
eastern Himalayan societies and their significant role in shaping
food cultures and politics in contemporary India.
In the following sections of the essay, I highlight narratives and
representations of fermented food from Northeast India. Much of
the fieldwork was done in 2018–2019 when I was tracing stories
of indigenous cultures of preserving food and the emergence of
Naga cuisine in metropolitan India. However, I also draw from a
longer engagement with individuals, communities, and collectives
working on food-related issues in Northeast India, Nepal, and
Bhutan. My interest in the issue emerged as part of my doctoral
fieldwork along the foothills of eastern Assam and Nagaland
between 2009 and 2011. Although my focus was on militarization,
extractive regimes (oil and coal), and social relations, I was acutely
aware that food played a central role in mitigating conflicts and
maintaining social boundaries in the region (Kikon 2013). Over
the last decade, I extended my work to metropolitan India where
many indigenous migrants from Northeast India had traveled in
search of work and livelihood. There they often experienced rac-
ism and discrimination on the basis of their appearance and way of
life. Among other markers, the food they carried from home be-
came instrumental in their experiences of harassment by land-
lords and neighbors. At the same time, it was certain kinds of
fermented food such as bamboo shoot, soya beans, and dried
fish that created bonds of sociality among migrants.
The Taste of Place
There are many ways to describe Northeast India: either as re-
mote and marginal to the Indian mainland or a region with
extraordinary histories of trade, mobility, and communities.1 I
1. See David Ludden’s essay (2005) on Northeast India and the pol-
itics of boundaries and political nature of maps. Also refer to Willem van
Schendel’s article (2002) to engage with the politics of spatialization,
academic politics of scale, and new ways of thinking about regional areas
like Northeast India.
S377
prefer to invoke the seasons. Territorial boundaries fail to dampen
the heightened experiences of seasons in this part of the world.
“Spaces that elude national maps,” writes historian David Ludden
(2005:5), “have now mostly disappeared from intellectual life.”
Situated along the eastern Himalayan range, the bamboo
shoot foraging season starts in the summer around June and
stretches all the way to August/September. As the shoots appear
in the beautiful bamboo grooves, the monsoon clouds in this part
of the world “bounce between the Patkai ranges and the eastern
Himalaya ranges” (Rahman 2020). Yet, the history of militari-
zation and violence in the region means life is precarious.
Therefore, accounts of bamboo shoot fermenters and consumers
offer us new ways to think about taste, smell, and alliances. Just as
following Matsutake mushrooms, Anna Tsing (2015:4) reflects,
“guides us to possibilities of coexistence within environmental
disturbance,” to follow fermented bamboo shoot guides us to
explore the possible alliances and fellowships in a militarized and
extraction-intensive region (fig. 1).
The monsoon rain across the Brahmaputra Valley can be hard
and harsh. The raindrops are thick and sharp. On some days,
they feel like liquid whiplash on your skin. It literally hurts when
it pours in this part of the world. However, not everyone seeks
shelter from the rain during the monsoons. During my field-
work, I would see Khasi women in the rain carrying wooden bas-
kets stocked with tender bamboo shoots walking in the neighbor-
hoods of Guwahati. Around Kharguli and Digholi Pukhuri, they
would stop along houses and shops to sell their produce. Assamese
vendors would sell tender bamboo shoot in the Ganeshguri market
and Uzan Bazaar. Beside the bus stop in Manipuri Basti too, groups
of Meitei women would sell new batches of fermented bamboo
shoot in plastic packets along with vegetables and dry fish. There is a
proliferation of fermented food like bamboo shoot in Guwahati.
Yet, on closer observation, the city also illuminates the different
ways of preparing the item, a reflection of the ethnic communities
who sell it and eat it. In this sense, it is ethnic bodies that carry and
sell bamboo shoot and keep the fermenting cultures alive.2
Encounters with fermented food are about flavors, interjected
with intersubjective definitions and feelings about what consti-
tutes the right taste.3 Understanding fermented food cultures was
2. Although some of the ethnic groups have exclusive demands for sep-
arate homelands, the lived experiences of fermenters and consumers highlight
a connectivity. Feelings of alienation, injustice, militarization, and experiences
of being migrants and encounters with racism and violence are common
themes that come up. All these accounts give rise to the “Northeasterner”
experience in Indian cities like Delhi or Mumbai. Fermented food, as I will
discuss later in the essay, plays an important role in creating a sense of alliance
and fellowship.
3. I draw from Steven Shapin’s work on intersubjectivity and move away
from the notional objectivity/subjectivity binary. For Shapin, the epistemic
“stick” of objectivity rests in an “unproblematic” plane of universalism, while
subjectivity is relegated as an individualized and private judgment. It is as
though arguing about taste “beyond a certain point” (Shapin 2011:172) is
pointless and rude. Other than creating disruption, subjectivity is devoid of
 S378
Figure 1. Northeastern India. Map created by Sarat Phukan.
not easy. The fermentation sites were mostly domestic spaces like
kitchens, and it was women who were predominantly involved in
preserving food. Care for the household and fermenting food
seem to be connected. Care, in the context of fermenting food,
appeared to be caring for the development of the microbial
process (Paxson 2013) and also the taste. The nature of caring for
fermenters includes deep knowledge about how to differentiate
the fermented from the rotten, a knowledge that, according to
Mintz (2008:56), “illuminates the power of culture and social
learning to shape perception.” He notes that one-third of food
consumed by human societies has undergone some form of
fermentation, and this deserves recognition, as fermentation is
central in helping the process of evolution and nutrition in the
human diet.
rationality. Here, I dwell on taste and odor (smelly food or sour taste) not as
personal judgments that are private and arbitrary but as feelings that emerge
from shared experiences of different ethnic groups. Everyday experiences of
fermented food cultures provide an opportunity to examine how taste, often
subsumed within categories of subjective and private, powerfully shapes the
political and social worlds of citizens. Therefore, engaging with the “everyday
life of science-making” (7) leads us to interrogate existing “problematic”
frameworks about objectivity and subjectivity.
Current Anthropology Volume 62, Supplement 24, October 2021
Of course, there are various worldviews on fermentation.
Michael Pollan’s reflections capture how the invisible world of
fungi and bacteria shapes what constitutes protest and politics in
industrialized societies. For Pollan, fermenting one’s own food is
both a process of becoming a creator of unique tastes and also a
form of protest against homogenizing flavors of food experi-
ences (Pollan 2012:xii). At the heart of this practice, Pollan
reflects, is sharing food, living off the grid, resisting the idea of
becoming passive consumers, standing up to a corporate econ-
omy, and building a community of fermenters.
Contrary to this imagination, fermented food cultures in
Northeast India, often produced in nonindustrialized settings,
are categorized as exotic and marginal to food cultures in India.
They do not inhabit the same artisanal space that Pollan attri-
butes to fermented practices in industrialized societies in the
West. These dominant stereotypes take away the powerful ac-
counts of fermented food cultures and their impact on the pro-
duction of the embodied and intersubjective nature of knowledge
and politics. To make fermented bamboo shoot, one requires fresh,
tender shoots. Here, elevation and ecology play a significant role.
Bamboo grows in the plains, along the elevated foothills, and in the
mountains across the region. While one can eat fermented bamboo
shoot throughout the year, there is a season—June to October—to
harvest and preserve it. During this time, wild ferns, herbs, flowers,
Kikon Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood S379

and gourds are also available. This calls for a new imagination to
understand the edible ecological plant world in the eastern Hima-
layas (fig. 2).
Fermented food such as milk, rice, cereals, and vegetables are
consumed across India (Satish Kumar et al. 2013). Shops and
supermarkets across the country sell curd, cottage cheese, but-
termilk, pickles, or ingredient mixes to prepare idli, dosa, dhokla,
and jalebi. Thus, the perception of fermented food cultures from
the eastern Himalayan regions like Northeast India as inferior
and revolting are founded on class and caste hierarchies. But the
popularity of fermented food from the region is on the rise. For
example, akhuni (fermented soya beans), anishi (fermented yam
cakes), and ngari (fermented fish) have appeared on the menu of
ethnic restaurants and cafés across metropolitical cities in main-
land India. Across Northeast India too, cities like Guwahati, Di-
mapur, Shillong, and Itanagar serve bamboo shoot chutneys and
curries. Yet, accounts of fermenting bamboo shoot are hazy at best.
Excited to see a pile of tender bamboo shoots at Uzan Bazaar
in Guwahati, I asked about the stock. The vendors said, “From
the hills.” When I inquired, “Which hills?” given that Guwahati
shares its borders with a number of hill districts and states, the
vendor responded “Garo Hills.” He described how he had re-
fused a batch of bamboo shoots the previous week because they
were “old.” Plants are so integral to our dietary lives that we
often qualify their texture and quality of taste by attributing
temporal features assigned to humans. Even for bamboo shoot,
vendors and fermenters often employ terms like “young” and
“tender” to describe the taste and feature of the plant. The fresh
bamboo shoots in Guwahati during summer come from foragers
who enter the forest and harvest the young shoots from bamboo
Figure 3. Fresh bamboo shoot at Uzan Bazaar, Guwahati. Photo
grooves (fig. 3). credit: Dolly Kikon.
Bamboo shoot is a popular delicacy, but many households in
urban areas like Guwahati and Dimapur prefer to buy it from the
only one place in Shillong where we go to buy our fermented
store. Increasingly, the process of fermentation is no longer part
food. Khasis don’t usually make fermented foods at home; we
of an urban household’s daily routine. In a conversation about
prefer to buy them.”
fermentation, a Khasi friend from Shillong reminisced, “There is
The origins of the fermented food appear to symbolize the
distance of the urban consumers from the creators (Pollan 2012).
Thus, familiarity about fermented food does not mean a deeper
engagement with the processes. Such conversations denote how
fermentation and fermented food is seen as a revenue-generating
activity across communities. It also shows how urbanization and
markets in the region are shaping food practices.4 These expe-
riences can be witnessed among urban consumers in the West as
well.
The ability to buy processed meat, seafood, or meat packaged
in supermarkets “enable[s] us to eat meat without the killers or
the killing,” notes Pachirat (2011:3). Although many households
have stopped producing fermenting food, community culture

4. For instance, many Assamese households in urban areas of Guwahati

buy kahudi/panitenga and kharoli (fermented mustard seeds) from the
Figure 2. From left to right: Watercress, pumpkin, pennywort, market. In Dimapur as well, Naga consumers buy essential ferments like
bottle gourd, fish mint (top). Fiddlehead ferns, bamboo shoot, fermented bamboo shoot (wet/pulp/smoked) and anishi (fermented yam
pumpkin flowers (below). Photo credit: Dolly Kikon. leaves) or akhuni/axone (fermented soyabeans) from the market.
 S380
and pride remain strongly connected to these food items. Core
sets of values reiterating ethnic pride and heritage are also widely
visible. For instance, in Nagaland, specific communities and fer-
mented foods are seen to be inseparable.5 Fermented food prac-
tices in the region showcase food cultures as identity markers.
Although eating fermented food like bamboo shoot is becoming
expressions of indigenous identities of/from the region across
India (Kikon 2015; Singh, Singh, and Sureja 2007), embracing
fermented food culture is centered on consumption: taste, feel-
ings, and the sensorial connections.
There are many ways to ferment bamboo shoot. To be precise,
any fresh bamboo shoot chopped and stored in a container fer-
ments. But determining the taste as the fermentation sets in re-
quires years of practice and knowledge. My aim in this essay is to
provide the accounts of bamboo shoot fermenters and consumers
and explore how differences and alliances are produced. Some
ferment the bamboo shoot in dark and dry places, and others place
stones on top of the jars to apply pressure during fermentation.
There are also those who line the walls of the container with ba-
nana leaves. The fermenting process takes place in earthen pots,
cane baskets, glass jars, and plastic containers. Every community
asserts a distinct technique to ferment bamboo shoot, and none of
them is incorrect. However, there is an emphasis on “our way” as
the “best way.” Perhaps there is a belief that a particular kind of
ethnic knowledge is superior and authentic. It was such assertions
that brought a performative element to my conversations with
fermenters and consumers alike. The energy was difficult to ig-
nore, and the excitement was altogether infectious.
“It depends on what you intend to do. Big piece, small pieces,
or pound them into pulp,” Zubeno said. A fermenter from
Wokha, she described the chopping techniques for tender bam-
boo shoot. The conversation was animated. She constantly ex-
panded and contracted her forefinger and thumb to demonstrate
the size of the pieces. In the middle of our conversation, her voice
trailed off. Appearing restless, she mumbled, “hah, ahummm,” a
note of dissatisfaction, and got off from her chair hastily. “Wait,”
she told me and returned with an empty plastic bottle. She placed
the plastic bottle on her thigh and made gestures of chopping with
her right hand. The plastic bottle as an imaginary bamboo shoot
created an additional air of excitement. Fermentation, Zubeno
said, was part of her being: “We do not exist without it.” She had
touched, tasted, and loved it since she was a child.
The Flavor of Bamboo Shoot
Touch is central to start the process of fermentation. The taste
develops and grows as the hands and the tongue work together.
For fermented bamboo shoot, the distinction of value, famil-
5. For instance, the Lotha tribe are associated with fermented bamboo
shoot and the Ao tribe are known for their anishi (fermented yam
cakes), while the Sümi tribe are regarded as the best akhuni (fermented
soya beans) makers, and the Rengma tribe are known for their fermented
mustard leaf items.
Current Anthropology Volume 62, Supplement 24, October 2021
iarity, and creating taste is grounded on touch (Classen 2005).
Yet, there are no standardized mechanisms of taste for com-
munities involved in fermenting bamboo shoot. Perhaps this is
the unique character of fermenting cultures and identities. From
crunchy and sour to soggy and soft, the accounts of eating
fermented food are never straightforward. Tangy, tasty, aro-
matic, delicious, mouthwatering. How do we remain faithful to a
standardized taste? From the moment the tender bamboo shoot
is chopped and sealed in assigned jars, the fermenter is vigilant,
touching, handling, smelling, and watching the preparation.
Sure, the element of uncertainty and chances of going moldy
and bad are there. But it is here that the senses become observant
and monitor the process. Raymond Williams notes that taste is
more than a physical sense. It is more than tasting with the
mouth, and is associated more closely to “touch or feel” (Williams
2015:147). However, as taste became associated with the power of
the human faculty, explains Williams, the definition was reduced
to an abstraction with manners and rules of etiquette. This was the
beginning of discriminating and distinguishing the tasteful from
the tasteless.
In other words, the meaning of taste moved away from the
human senses and became “a matter of acquiring certain habits
and rules” (Williams 2015:248). Unlike taste/tasteful,6 which is
compromised and reduced to a sense of conformity to external
habits, Williams notes that the term “tasteless” continues to carry
the “older and wider sense of touch and feel,” although in a moral
context more than anything else. Connecting with Williams’s
work on taste, I observed how feeling and touching was a central
process of fermenting food. When I listened to conversations
about fermenting bamboo shoot, the accounts were ordinary and
simple. Yet, the elements of touch and taste—sour, sweetness,
strong, mild—were always present. People also reacted strongly
to how, why, and when to eat it. It was impossible to shake off the
individualized feelings and stories. Feelings about preferences
and fermented narratives also followed a territorial and ethnic
specificity.
“I like fermented bamboo shoot from Assam. The ones from
Nagaland and Meghalaya are strong, way too strong for me,”
Ashpriya said. It was her grandmother who fermented bamboo
shoot in the household and made different kinds of pickles. Her
family also fried fermented bamboo shoot with mustard oil and
garlic as a side dish on days when food was bland. In addition, it
was used as a balm for wasp stings and other insect bites. After
her grandmother passed away, her mother and her younger sis-
ter fermented bamboo shoots. Until a few years back, they sent her
jars of fermented food from Sonari to Guwahati.
In 2019, Ashpriya made her first batch of fermented bamboo
shoot. She said it was an emotional experience. She was thrilled
and documented the event on her mobile phone for her family.
She follows the values and rules about fermenting that her
grandmother taught her. She explained,
6. Also Michael Taussig’s (2009) work refers to distasteful things in
the colonial and postcolonial vocabulary and mannerisms.
Kikon Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood S381

My grandmother said that we should be quiet during the

chopping process.
No farting and no gossiping.
We should not be distracted like getting up in the
middle to do some other work.
And . . . we must quickly store it in the jar.
We must be fast.
Everything must be fast fast.
What appears as biological in nature such as farting or social
norms like gossiping are considered intertwined with sensory
cultures. Here, values associated with taste, pace, and mindful-
ness determine the quality of the fermented food. Therefore, just
like touching has a microbial connection, farting is perceived as
disrupting the air and the environment. Classen (2001) notes
that senses are shaped by culture and cannot be perceived as
biological alone. Therefore, observing social norms is deemed
important. For instance, Ashpriya remembers how her grand-
mother kept away naughty children while preparing fermented
bamboo shoot. The physical movement and agitated spirit of
children affected fermentation. She added,
Figure 4. Fermented bamboo shoot from the author’s collection.
When the fermentation is not right,
Photo credit: Dolly Kikon.
like it is not sour enough, or it becomes too sweet,
the fault lies with the maker and not the bamboo shoot.
The touch is wrong, we say. But with fermented bamboo shoot, I don’t remember
Taste is all about the touch. when I started eating it.
Is there a reason for this nature of knowledge? I wondered. Maybe as a baby, that’s all I can say.
Then I learned that Ashpriya followed her grandmother’s in- Food evokes powerful memories of the past. Recounting
structions. She kept her curious little daughter away from poignant memories of lives and places is often centered around
touching or playing with the bamboo shoot, and this helped her meals and food. In addition, family recipes are passed down
to focus and created a space for her to function without dis- across the generations and play a significant role in invoking a
traction. Consumers like Ashpriya considered the homemade community’s past connected to food and memory (Sutton 2001).
fermented bamboo shoot tastier, but others were quick to make Zubeno, the fermenter from Wokha, also describes how she fed
additional moral claims. They emphasized, for example, that fermented bamboo shoot to her child. She said, “He was around
having “clean thoughts” and “clean hands” was important, thereby two-and-a-half years old. I started feeding him as soon as he was
demonstrating an authority on how good taste is tied to a code of able to eat rice. Maybe my mother did the same with me. She
conduct of the maker (fig. 4). must have fed me fermented bamboo shoot very young.”
I also learned that certain ethnic households assigned specific
days of the week as fermented bamboo shoot day. During a
conversation with Augustin, a researcher from the Karbi ethnic
Gendering Fermentation
community, I learned that his household observed two days a Scientific literature on fermented food in Northeast India shows
week as bamboo shoot day. “Why twice a week?” I asked, and he how mothers feed infants fermented food as health food (Satish
replied, “It is associated with meat and fish. We add it to flavor Kumar et al. 2013). In addition, fermented food is also cele-
non-vegetarian dishes and eat it as curry too. So, I say twice a brated as a significant cultural symbol, yet fermenting is highly
week as a figure of speech. But what I mean is that fermented gendered. Women predominantly possess traditional knowl-
bamboo shoot is a regular feature of our diet.” Known as Hen-up edge and skills of fermentation across communities (Kikon
ahan, fermented bamboo shoot curry is an integral part of Karbi 2015; Singh, Singh, and Sureja 2007). For instance, women from
cuisine. Wondering how far one can trace the memory of taste, I the Apatani tribe of Arunachal Pradesh use banana leaves to line
asked Augustin about his earliest recollections of eating fermented the bamboo baskets before fermenting the bamboo shoot. It
bamboo shoot. He said: takes 6–8 days for fermentation. Among the Adi women,
No, I do not recollect eating fermented bamboo shoot. bamboo shoot is wrapped in banana leaves and placed under
I remember when I saw a potato for the first time. stones near streams and water bodies. It takes 3–4 months for
I asked my mother, “What is this?” fermentation. In Manipur, Meitei women chop and dry the
When I saw dal (lentils) for the first time, I asked my fresh bamboo shoots in the sun for 15–20 minutes and do not
mother, “What is this?” wash them, to retain the flavor and taste. Fermentation takes
 S382
place in clay pots and takes around 2–3 months. Khasi women
in Meghalaya use glass jars and bamboo baskets to ferment
bamboo shoot, while women from the Barman community in
Tripura prefer to cook fresh bamboo shoot and make a fish dish
called Godhak (Singh, Singh, and Sureja 2007).
The gendering of fermentation is also visible in tales of food.
Some years ago, a friend narrated a Sümi Naga story about
akhuni (fermented soya beans). Once upon a time, a young
woman often went to bed hungry because her cruel stepmother
deprived her of food. One day, she cooked a pot of soya beans in
the fields and ate to her heart’s content. She left the leftovers
wrapped in a leaf under a haystack. When she returned to the
field a few days later, the beans had become sticky and flavorful.
From that day, she fermented soya beans and ate them. As days
went by, her skin glowed and she became beautiful. She married
well and became a wealthy woman. While this story resonates
with taste and flavor, it also draws our attention to the valuation
and history of fermented food among communities who practice
shifting cultivation. The reason food cultures of communities are
seldom incorporated in conversations about cuisine and taste is
because dominant frameworks about modern gastronomy and
taste are connected to communities with a history of settled
agriculture.
Given how seasons are key for shifting cultivation and the
cycles of vegetables and plants, stories of fermentation among
upland communities in Northeast India centrally emphasize
time, precision, and a sustained sensory engagement. This also
means that the microbes at work in the fermenting jars set off a
series of social practices, taboos, and guidelines. These accounts
come across as community histories and are considered local
knowledge. For instance, when Zubeno, fermenter from Wokha,
finished her performative account of chopping and fermenting
bamboo shoot, our conversation lingered on taste and time. She
stressed the “three-day rule.” According to her, fermentation
sets in within 24 hours, but one has to wait for three days before
opening the lid and tasting its flavor.
Who defines these timelines and procedures? What is the role
of the researcher and the fermenter? My role as a researcher was
not to produce an ordered and standardized procedure of fer-
mentation. All communities with nonindustrialized fermenting
food cultures depend on the season and external conditions—
rain, heat, cold, touch— to determine the taste. Yet this is not
the case with the scientific papers documenting indigenous fer-
menting processes in Northeast India. The scientific findings are
dependent on laboratory tests and results to analyze the char-
acters of microbes under different atmospheric conditions. The
personalities of the fermenters and their world are erased.
Some interviewees believed that fermented bamboo shoot
lacked taste due to the inconsistency and miscalculation of the
maker/creator. My interlocuters often wondered if these pro-
cesses of fermentation were “unscientific.”7 The word “scientific”
7. The English word “unscientific” was used in conversations that
were in Lotha, Nagamese, or Assamese.
Current Anthropology Volume 62, Supplement 24, October 2021
during conversations with traditional fermenters transformed
the atmosphere. Among nonindustrial home-based fermenters
there is a sense that traditional methods are inferior to scientific
methods.8 Scientific papers on fermentation practices also give us
a high-strung laboratory-driven knowledge. There is regimented
order and the structure of the findings. There is a clear dem-
onstration of the laboratory tests conducted on the microbes and
the presence of lactic acid bacteria. A scientific finding about
lactic acid in fermented bamboo shoots from Northeast India
reports:
This study showed that strains of LAB (Lactic Acid Bacteria)
played important roles by their functional properties related to
acidifying capacity, degradation of antinutritive factors, tol-
erance to bile-salt, wide enzymatic activities, and nonpro-
ducers of biogenic amines. Understanding the biological and
biochemical basis of indigenous knowledge of the ethnic people
of Northeast for production of nonperishable bamboo shoots
by lactic acid fermentation has merit. (Tamang and Tamang
2009; emphasis added)
Although the article refers to the diverse fermenting cultures,
there are no conversations, observations, or interviews with the
fermenters. The study highlights the nature of relationship be-
tween the world of traditional fermentation and the scientific
community, and institutional findings as superior in comparison
to the rich fermenting cultures outside the laboratory. To many
scientists, communities outside the laboratory are considered
sites to extract samples. On the one hand, the characteristics and
identities of the lactic acid bacteria, such as their resilience to
grow in brine and their ability to coagulate, are well laid down,
including the techniques and results. On the other hand, the
practices of fermenters and consumers and how they care for
fermenting food, the deep cultural and social values, and their
knowledge of microbial ecology remain absent. The laboratory
life of fermented food highlights how the proof and evidence
about the truth of fermentation has to be dislodged from the
experiential world and stored in a laboratory test tube. Social
anthropologists “might have no business probing the activities of
science” (Latour and Woolgar 1986:19), but a deeper relation-
ship between fermenting cultures and the scientific world needs
to be iterated. After all, the referential point of taste and smell is a
central characteristic of value addition and marketability (Besky
2021), including the origins of the modern commercial world of
nutritional value (Shapin 2011; see fig. 5).
Studying the social construction of science, Bruno Latour and
Steve Woolgar (1986) suggest: “The elimination of alternative
8. They internalize how their processes are not scientific and there-
fore keep these practices outside the realm of science. In my previous
work on akhuni or fermented soya beans, similar moments surfaced, and
I asserted that such moments highlight the hierarchies of modernity.
They showcase our engagement with, and imagination of, modernity
where certain knowledge systems are relegated as simple and unscientific
over others (see Kikon 2015).
Kikon Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood
Figure 5. From left to right: Fermented bamboo shoot juice and fermented bamboo shoot chunks from the author’s collection. Image
credit: Dolly Kikon.
interpretations of scientific data and the rendering of these
alternatives as less plausible is a central characteristic of scientific
activity. Consequently, the practising scientist is likely to be as
much involved with the task of producing order and plausible
accounts out of a mass of disordered observation as is the outside
observer” (36).
Fermentation is a living process. The fermenter or the “out-
side observer” are spread across thousands of households and
geographies. Sight, touch, and tongue are indicators to assess the
activities of the living organisms, and so are seasons and to-
pographies—not merely visible to the eyes as color and bubbly
objects, but alive to the taste buds as an encounter of texture and
flavor. The makers and consumers are constantly interpreting
and establishing a living ecology of fermented culture. Every
fermentation process is a transformative relationship.
An interviewee once said that sometimes her ferments turned
“sour,” so she threw them away. “Aren’t all fermented bamboo
shoot sour?” I inquired. “It is a different kind of sourness,” she
responded. Fermenters develop what Susan Lepselter (2016:29)
refers to as a “meta-awareness,” where knowledge of the taste
becomes an embodied feeling on the tongue, nostrils, and eyes,
and is incorporated into the pores of the fingers.
Reflecting about the character of fermentation, American
food activist and fermenter Sandor Katz describes each batch of
fermented food as unique and different. The invisible life forces
that ferment our food, notes Katz, give an element of en-
chantment and magic to the entire process. Dwelling on mi-
crobial processes, he highlights how transformation, decom-
position, death, and fermentation are aligned on the same plane.
Referring to microbes in our environment as “communities,”
Katz (2012) underlines how our quest to join fermenting cultures
is a way of seeking connections with food and a way of life.
Fermenting cultures show us how there is a “hunger to be more
S383
connected to the earth and the environment and other forms of
life around us” (xix).9
The Smell of Community
Fermentation directs our attention toward identities, commu-
nities, and elements of social change. Smell is central here.
Migrants from Northeast India experience racism and disgust in
Indian cities and hostels through everyday activities of eating
“smelly” food (Kikon 2017). As much as fermentation is a nat-
ural process, the microbial activities also transform community
perception on citizenship and rights. Particularly in India, the
sensorial politics of disgust is deeply founded on producing mean-
ings about purity and cleanliness (Staples 2014). As a result, policing
the boundaries of smell and food becomes a matter of governance
and order. The food cultures of certain communities as dis-
gusting in India signals the role of disgust in reiterating hierar-
chies and violations (Miller 1998).
For instance, in 2013 the city police in India’s capital, New
Delhi, came out with the famous guidelines for migrants from
Northeast India to refrain from cooking “smelly food like Bam-
boo shoot and akhuni (fermented soya beans).” A series of pro-
tests and allegations about discrimination and racism appeared in
public sites and digital forums (Hueiyen Lanpao Editorial Team
2013).
In the mid-1990s, for students from Northeast India in Delhi
deep anxieties over cooking fermented food prevailed. Many of
us improvised ways of cooking fermented food. For example, we
9. Also see the video by Ann Husaini and Emily Lobsenz for the New
York Times Op-Doc, available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?vpYue
5osieODk.
 S384 Current Anthropology Volume 62, Supplement 24, October 2021

soaked akhuni (fermented soya beans) in hot water for 3–

5 minutes and covered it with a lid. We then made a paste and
added fresh tomatoes, chilies, ginger, and salt. For fermented
bamboo shoot, we added them in the curry a few minutes before
we turned off the cooking gas. The lid remained intact on the pot
and we closed the windows and doors to make sure our neigh-
bors were not bothered by the smell. Sometimes we lit incense
sticks. Such moments highlight how food creates boundaries and
meanings of disgust. The politics of taste and odors produces the
smell of a community. Fermenting food practices connects us to
a meaningful life and the environment around us (Katz 2012). In
the light of eating fermented food in New Delhi, one can add that
the process to find a meaningful life also means deriving pleasure
and cherishing a shared sense of eating smelly food.10 As fine
dining restaurants in India add Northeast cuisine to “celebrate”
diversity, fermented food is erased or tuned down to “suit local
taste” (Dutta 2019; fig. 6).
Here, lived experiences create a regional solidarity and alliance
(Hazarika 2017). Specifically, consuming fermented food and
ethnic politics grounded on territoriality give rise to distinct
forms of “gastropolitics” (DeSoucey 2017). Experiences of ca-
maraderie and bonding created by consuming fermented food
among migrants from the northeast in urban India break down Figure 6. Fermented, sun-dried, smoked, and curled bamboo
boundaries, especially when people are away from home. Yet shoot from the author’s collection. Image credit: Dolly Kikon.
they also tend to establish a hierarchy of food cultures of certain
communities while erasing other fermenting cultures in public
perception. Therefore, the smell of a community derived from new values and solidarities. It is alive and breathing with new
eating fermented food offers us new analytical frameworks to meanings to infuse new political smells.
understand social relationships and alliances. This means un-
settling existing ethnic characteristics and creating solidarities to Transethnicity: A Culinary Identity
value an ecological world where microbial biodiversity is cele-
brated and is part of community life. Fermented food like bamboo shoot operates as a distinct marker
Accounts of migrants from Northeast India highlight how of ethnic identification from the outside (etic), and also as a
fermented food helps them to remember family and loved ones collective glue (emic) where a shared regional understanding
back home (Kikon 2018; McDuie-Ra 2012). Once a migrant in about food culture functions as a connection. Celebration of
New Delhi described that his clothes and shoes smelled of taste and flavors creates a sense of community solidarity that
fermented food whenever he returned from home and unpacked cuts across ethnic markers that I refer to as transethnicity. If
his suitcase. Just as migrants remember home, it also creates new fermented food like bamboo shoot is consumed across ethnic
communities and civilities. For instance, during hostile border lines, the notion of transethnicity encourages us to consider
disputes along the Assam-Nagaland border, when Ahom and food cultures as a significant theoretical framework to study new
Naga elders meet for reconciliation meetings and eat together, forms of communities and political entanglements. Translating
they praise the food and invoke a shared past and community practices and forms of knowledge as a field of inquiry under-
camaraderie (Kikon 2019). Fermented food cultures represent lying the everyday experiences of eating fermented food is key.
Transethnicity offers deeper engagement that generates how
lived experiences of “smelly” food shape citizenship practices
10. However, fermentation has become a trend in places like Mumbai, and politics of solidarity. In addition, it shows how fermented
Goa, and Pune. These fermenting communities from metropolitan Indian food ethnographies contribute toward new embodied practices.
cities are mobile and wealthy and follow global trends. Kombucha is a fine It is key to interpret and analyze the “unruliness of smell”
example (Ray Chaudhuri 2017). The “community of microbes” (Katz 2012)
(Pachirat 2011:3) attributed to fermented food and to address
is the only thing that connects the cool Indian hipster fermenters and ethnic
how smelly food produces distinct values and a contingent
groups from Northeast India. As health-conscious hipsters, they connect
with their global networks in countries like Switzerland to procure the
alliance of “us.”
Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast or SCOBY, known as the “mother” Northeasterner or the Northeast has become a regional
(Ray Chaudhuri 2017) to start the process of fermentation. Kombucha identity based on geographical location in India. When it comes
smells as well. Yet the connection of fermenting cultures in Northeast India to lived experiences about what it really means to be a North-
reiterates a politics of difference and disgust. easterner or to come from the Northeast, a strong distinguishing
Kikon Bamboo Shoot in Our Blood
factor is food. Identifying the cuisines of communities across the
region, Hoihnu Hauzel notes, “The importance of bamboo shoot
can hardly be exaggerated in the Northeastern diet” (Hauzel
2014:3–4). While scholars have highlighted questions of ethnicity,
identity, and diversity as a regional category (Ngaihte and
Hanghal 2017), food writers like Hauzel are drawn toward the
transformative elements of taste that give rise to a sensory re-
gional identity. “To eat food from the Northeastern states, one
earlier went to the state house restaurants or Dilli Haat. Today,
one would go to Humayanpur instead,” writes Chaudhuri (n.d.).
Others follow a territorialized framework of writing about North-
east Indian food where dishes are bounded with the respective states
and ethnic groups (Chopra 2014).
Ethnicity is an important theoretical lens to study significant
cultural practices and notions of race (Hutchinson and Smith
1996), nationalism (Smith 1992), and authenticity and taste (Ray
2016). In the culinary world, ethnicity is an all-encompassing
category that ranges from a national identity connected with
food (Indian, Pakistani, Chinese, Vietnamese) to a racialized
category like non-Western dishes outside the French and Italian
cuisine as opposed to Japanese, Chinese, or Vietnamese dishes
(Ray 2016). Transethnicity as a culinary identity recognizes food
practices and community connections at particular junctures
of history. In Northeast India, ethnicity provides a theoretical
framework to analyze conflict and violence (Hausing 2009), de-
mands for homelands, natural resources (Karlsson 2011), and
autonomy (Barbora 2002). In addition, exclusive community
claims (Hausing 2009) and assertions (Hausing 2020; Vande-
kerckhove and Suykens 2008) are examined as ethnic in nature.
However, these ethnic communities portrayed as communi-
ties at war with one another also seek reconciliation and live as
neighbors.
In the last two decades, there has been heightened focus on
ethnic conflicts and nationalism that is based on exclusive his-
tories and “unique cultures” across Northeast India (Kikon
2015). Ethnic model villages and food festivals have become a
common theme across the region (Kikon 2005; Wettstein 2016).
In ethnic food festivals, each community displays their food to
mark their distinct culture and tradition. Yet, on a closer look,
products like fermented bamboo shoot or rice beer are available
across the different food stalls.11 Such examples demonstrate a
transethnic culinary moment. The future of food and innova-
tion (Metcalfe 2019), race and labor relations (Holmes 2013),
fair trade and justice (Besky 2013), and ethics of branding food
(Probyn 2016) are important intellectual works framed through
food cultures and consumption practices.
In this regard, fermented food cultures from Northeast India
draw our attention to new alliances. Emerging culinary practices
offer a new lens to understand transethnic solidarities. This also
means acknowledging gastronomical communities as political
communities (Anderson 1991; Chatterjee 2004: Kikon 2017).
11. The connection between identity and food is also important in the
hills of North Bengal where Darjeeling tea is connected to Gorkha identity
and a driving force for political demands (Besky 2013).
S385
Fermented food across the Himalayan region goes beyond the
territorially defined state spaces and boundaries and intersects
through reciprocal exchanges, food practices, and resource re-
gime (Kikon 2015:331). Out of these processes, a notion of
shared identity—a regional identity as Northeastern/Himalayan—
also comes into existence.12 However, across the Indian sub-
continent, fermented bamboo shoot as an appetizing food is
missing. This is peculiar because India is the second largest
bamboo-producing country after China, and irrespective of the
nutritional benefits and market potential of fermented bamboo
shoot in India, the market for bamboo shoot remains absent. The
reason is that the “pungent taste and strong odour” of the food is
unappealing to the Indian consumer (Nongdam and Leimapok
pam 2014:10).
These accounts of fermented food create polarizing experi-
ences of what is considered palatable and repugnant. Kire, a Naga
writer, describes the lives of ethnic migrants from Northeast
India as intertwined with fermented food cultures:
A pungent, sweet, aroma wafted through the ventilator of a
dingy rented room in a residential Delhi locality. “Baiya Nigu
is cooking his Naga dish again,” exclaimed five year old Rahul
knowledgeably, sniffing the air and wrinkling his upturned
little nose in distaste. His chubby feet furiously peddled the
electric blue tricycle, its shrill bell ringing throughout the entire
stretch of corridor as if to ward away any lingering traces of the
offensive smell . . . . He (Nigu) had been warned by the
landlord not to cook his strong-smelling traditional dishes.
This warning had been initiated by complaints from the other
tenants who had reported a strange odour emitting from his
room. They all proclaimed the smell to be most foul and
simply unbearable. “It’s only fermented soya beans and some
bamboo shoot” he had stammered when faced with his
grumpy landlord. (Kire 2015:52–53)
It was flavors, disgust, and taste about fermented food that
drew me to explore transethnicity. The development of rela-
tionship and alliances among community members cutting
across ethnic lines, and at times interethnic hostilities, are formed
as a result of shared food cultures and celebrating flavors. Here,
the capacity to embrace fermented food like bamboo shoot unifies
opposition groups and creates new alliances. Otherwise marked
as distinct cultural traits of specific communities, fermented food
12. With the exception of Nepali cuisine, the Himalayan region as a
culinary topography remains absent in the West. A number of Indian
restaurants in Melbourne showcase their culinary affinity with Pakistani
or even Chinese and European cuisine. However, one is yet to come across
one that displays affinity to Bhutanese or Northeast Indian cuisine. The
confinement of a Himalayan regional identity as a geography of migration,
tourism, and an impending region facing drastic climatic devastation means
the reproduction of a region using taken-for-granted categories and frame-
works. Here, food remains invisible and escapes any form of analysis. Ex-
perts, consultants, and corporations benefit directly from distancing a region
like the Northeast and the Himalayan region as a remote and exotic geog-
raphy, thereby reinforcing hierarchies of power and knowledge.
 S386
like bamboo shoot defies exclusive territorial boundaries. It goes
against the assertions of ethnic claims for exclusive accounts. For
example, the preparation styles of fermented bamboo shoot
among communities are not drastically different, yet members
from different ethnic groups are quick to comment that their
method is genuine or more authentic. A lady from the Lotha
Naga community told me, “The Aos also make fermented bam-
boo shoot, but we are the ones who started making this first, so
our product tastes better” (emphasis added).
There is something about putting identity and food together
that can quickly become an assertion to claim one’s superiority.
In contrast, ethnic restaurants offering “Northeastern cuisine”
in cities like Delhi, Mumbai, and Chennai, or migrants forging
alliances and networks over fermented food, tell us something
new. Perceived through the lens of food cultures, ethnicity ap-
pears as a porous framework where members from different
ethnic groups transcend to experience a shared sense of com-
munity and fellowship. This shared sense of eating and longing
for fermented bamboo shoot exemplifies transethnicity, going
beyond exclusive kinship, blood ties, or cultural beliefs (Carsten
2019, 2004), and perhaps also a way of looking beyond racial,
territorial, and social identity (Hollingsworth 1997; McDuie-Ra
2016). Therefore, adopting transethnicity means understanding
how food alters our sense of political identity and meanings
about community. As economic development and mobility across
Northeast India produce a regional cuisine called Northeastern
cuisine, fermented food like bamboo shoot helps us locate new
forms of solidarities and political cultures.
Conclusion
Fermenting cultures involve a diversity of practices, processes,
and networks. Focusing on nonindustrialized practices of fer-
mentation, this essay traced the social and cultural terrain of
fermentation—an uncharted marginal practice—that is often
set aside as a domestic practice. The facet of fermentation as
highlighted in this essay is not about acquiring the right taste but
understanding how taste and touch are constituted within a
cultural and political memory of fermenting cultures. Not merely
procedural, the process of fermentation takes place across var-
ious sites—kitchens, courtyards, and living rooms—and the
action transforms relationships and our senses. I also examined
how the flavor of bamboo shoot underlines the importance of
connecting fermented food with memories of families and
communities. The ethnographic accounts revealed the connec-
tions between human societies and food and the relation be-
tween food and memory.
The impact of fermented food in creating solidarities and
networks is significant. For migrants from Northeast India, eating
shapes a shared experience of belonging and connects them to
the fermenter/family/community back home. In fermenting bam-
boo shoot, I juxtaposed narratives of scientific laboratory tests
to showcase how scientific work eliminates the social world
of fermenters and erases local knowledge. I argued that fer-
menting cultures offer a world of connection, care, palatability,
Current Anthropology Volume 62, Supplement 24, October 2021
and microbial engagement. Finally, fermentation helps us to
think about new relationships and alliances. Proposing trans-
ethnicity, I dwelled on the emergence of political identity
based on sensory experiences to elucidate new networks of
solidarity and imaginations. This is where we see the rise of a
“Northeast India” cuisine—tangy, spicy, aromatic, all blending
to create the smell of a community. The purpose of thinking
about transethnicity is not to simply discredit the political and
cultural assertions that ethnic communities seek to defend and
protect. Rather, it is to propose how fermented food cultures
invoke a sense of belonging, ethics of responsibility, and a moral
obligation toward communities transcending rigid ethnic classi-
fications. The representation of fermented food as part of the
Northeast cuisine, and thereby as part of the Northeast Identity,
cannot be perceived with casualness. Eating is not only a form of
ingestion but a practice where consumers should acknowledge
the cultivators, producers, makers, and packers, including the
rhythms, songs, sorrows, and stories of how the food arrived on
our plate.
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to my colleagues at the North East Social Research
Centre (Guwahati), the University of Melbourne, and the Australia
India Institute for their support. Thanks to the organizers of the
2019 Wenner-Gren symposium 160 “Cultures of Fermentation”
for the generous invitation. I presented an earlier version of this
essay at the workshop and received generous comments from my
fellow participants. Thank you, Heather Paxson, Salla Sariola,
Björn Reichhardt, Christina Warinner, Daniel Münster, Danilyn
Rutherford, Eben Kirksey, Eva Rosenstock, Jamie Lorimer, Jessica
Hendy, Katie Amato, Mark Aldenderfer, Matthaüs Rest, Megan
Tracy, Oliver Craig, Roberta Raffaetà, and Shinya Shoda. A special
thanks to Laurie Obbink for taking care of the participants and
overseeing the logistics of the wonderful event. I am also thankful
to the three anonymous reviewers and the comments from the
editors. To Joel Rodrigues, for an enriching fellowship and af-
fection. To Willem van Schendel for encouraging me to explore
the concept of transethnicity. I hope this is the beginning of a long
conversation. To the amazing interlocutors of fermented bamboo
shoot from Northeast India, your knowledge and laughter gave
me the strength to complete this essay. Elum montso ka!
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