The Hindu Lit For Life Unplugged: Discovering Kargil through food with Yash Saxena
Author Yash Saxena explores the cultural disconnect between younger generations in Kargil and their traditional cuisine in the book 'Stories from a Kargili Kitchen'. The work serves as a lens to understand how food preserves memory and identity in changing communities.
Why it matters
The book addresses the preservation of intangible cultural heritage and the evolution of regional identities in India.
On the way from Srinagar to Kargil, author and mountaineer Yash Saxena struck up a conversation with a group of youngsters from Kargil. Kargil, would soon become Yash’s base as they researched their book, Stories from a Kargili Kitchen, which then went on to be published by Penguin Books in January earlier this year.
They asked the youngsters what their favourite dishes from their home cuisine were. “I assumed they would name some dishes from Kargil, but they kept saying names of dishes from Kashmir. I asked them if they didn’t eat Kargil food that often, and they said they never eat Kargil food. ‘It’s only for old people, and we’re not able to digest it’, they said,” says Yash.
It was one of the first things that struck Yash: how much had changed within Kargil itself, and how a younger generation was growing increasingly distant from its own food.
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