ABSTRACT
In the Indian context, queer food culture studies is a terra incognita; existing research has focused mostly on literary texts and criticism (Menon, 2018; Pradhan, 2020; Sareen, 2021; Vanita, 2014). This chapter raises some pertinent questions about queer men’s relationships with food and cooking and attempt to initiate a serious discussion on queer food cultures in India. Narratives of domestic spaces, such as the home, often go unexplored in the context of queer food. To this end, through semi-structured interviews of self-identifying queer men located in urban, semi-urban, and rural spatial settings in India, the research interrogates three issues: (1) what are the relationships of queer men with the kitchen space and homemaking, (2) how and why do they “queer” food and the process of cooking, and (3) how do queer men’s food and cooking practices challenge and refashion hegemonic masculinity in India? In considering queer men who cook out of volition, the article explicates how their connections with cooking not only “broaden the discourse of masculinity and food” (Julier & Lindenfeld, 2005, p. 12) but also help challenge and refashion notions of normativity in a traditionally heteropatriarchal society.
