Article begins<\/h2>\n
When Shanthy left her coastal home in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in 1970 for Chicago,\u00a0she carried ways of caring that would reshape her family\u2019s bonds through war and displacement.\u00a0Over the next fifteen years, as violence against Tamils escalated, her eight siblings\u2014Shakuntala, Chandran, Babu, Nala, Saddan, Kala, Amutha, and Thushy\u2014and their parents would scatter across temporary homes in Europe, Africa, and the United States,\u00a0each finding their own way to maintain connection through food. By the time they reunited in Rochester, New York, the Sri Lankan Civil War had erupted, transforming their displacement from a detour and into a permanent reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The family initially\u00a0clung to the hopes of return. But as the war stretched into 26 brutal years, Jaffna\u2014where coconut palms swayed in salty breezes and neighbors called through open windows\u2014had been irrevocably altered. Extended family and old friends dispersed, and familiar rhythms of life were interrupted.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Food emerged as their bridge between past and present, between scattered family members, between the home they lost and the ones they were creating. The familiar aroma of spices and the warmth of shared meals offered both comfort and connection. Each sibling developed distinct practices of care through food, yet cooking and dining together became their shared language. Through these practices, they could not only evoke the flavors of home and pass down traditions but also begin mending wounds left by separation. In the process, they built something more than memories\u2014they created what scholars call an \u201caccidental community of memory,\u201d bound together by ongoing practices of care that sustained them through displacement.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The following stories reveal how different members of this family use food not just to preserve identity, but to actively nurture relationships despite upheaval. Their experiences show how cooking becomes an act of survival, a ritual of remembrance, and a way of building community in new places. Together, they remind us that even in displacement, people find ways to care for one another, creating unexpected forms of connection and belonging that span continents and generations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tShanthy making sakkarai (jaggery) appam\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cI didn\u2019t learn how to cook appam until I moved here,\u201d Shanthy says, expertly swirling fermented rice batter in her appachatti. The curved pan transforms the coconut-milk mixture into delicate crepes\u2014lacy-edged with pillowy centers. Though new to her repertoire, her movements suggest years of kitchen intuition.<\/p>\n She works with methodical grace, ingredients precisely measured and arranged. Each appam demands attention: the batter must ferment just long enough, the heat must brown the edges while keeping the center tender. She customizes them\u2014some with egg, others with jaggery or sweet milk\u2014reading each person\u2019s preferences like a familiar story.<\/p>\n For Shanthy, cooking has always been a language of care. Her journey into the kitchen began in childhood, first by watching her mother, then through her mother-in-law\u2019s exacting instruction when she married at sixteen. As the first to leave Jaffna, she carried this knowledge across oceans, using it to nurture first her younger siblings, then her own family.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKala making puttu, a dish made of rice flour and fresh coconut that is layered and steamed in a cylinder-shaped mold.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n But Sri Lanka\u2019s fruits, her absolute favorite, elude re-creation.\u00a0Through shopping and cooking, she seeks fruits that evoke home, tending to a\u00a0garden of memories with her family.<\/p>\n Through these recollections,\u00a0Kala weaves a rich tapestry of flavors, textures, and landscapes, bringing her family together not just around the table, but around the memories of the foods that flourish in their homeland. She hopes her children actively seek out these stories, asking questions about fruits they\u2019ve never tasted but somehow know through her detailed descriptions and careful preservation of memory.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tNala tasting her payasam to make sure the tapioca has fully cooked.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cPayasam is the sweet, so it has to be sweet,\u201d Nala says of this creamy tapioca dessert, traditionally made for celebrations. She doesn\u2019t even like sweets, but payasam is her dish.<\/p>\n In her kitchen, tapioca pearls sizzle in butter before joining the rolling boil. The tapioca must turn glass-clear before she adds coconut milk and her distinctive sweetener: jaggery. This unrefined palm sugar brings a complexity white sugar can\u2019t match.<\/p>\n Like Shanthy, Nala never made payasam in Sri Lanka. She taught herself in Rochester, choosing jaggery because it felt right\u2014a Sri Lankan ingredient for a Sri Lankan dish. Her care isn\u2019t about perfectly replicating tradition. It\u2019s about maintaining connection\u2014to her culture and to those who gather for her dessert. Her payasam matters not for its exactness but for what it preserves.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tBabu preparing kalan kulumbu (mushroom curry). \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n In Jaffna, Babu\u2019s father ruled with an iron fist, especially at mealtime. No one was allowed to eat until he sampled and finished his food. A stray pebble in the rice could send a plate flying into the yard. His mother cooked; his father judged\u2014a strict gendering of roles that reflected broader Tamil patriarchal traditions\u00a0that kept men out of the kitchen. Had Babu stayed, he might have inherited that dynamic, perpetuating the distance between male authority and the intimate labor of cooking.\u00a0<\/p>\n But displacement upended these gender norms. Like many Tamil men of his generation who were forced to leave home, like his younger brother Saddan, who learned to cook in his Indian boarding school, Babu learned to cook first for survival, then discovered it as a way to nurture others. This transformation wasn\u2019t just about acquiring new skills\u2014it represented a fundamental shift in how Tamil men could express care and participate in family life.<\/p>\n Fifty years later, cooking shapes his days as he settles into retirement. Each morning starts with solitary coffee, followed by exercise, then the trip to his grandchildren\u2019s house. There, he prepares the dishes that root them to their heritage: paruppu, chicken fry, shrimp curry, and hard-boiled eggs with rice. In contrast to his father\u2019s critical distance from the kitchen, Babu finds joy in the intimate details of feeding others. His grandchildren\u2019s praise\u2014\u201cYour food is better than Amma\u2019s [Babu\u2019s wife]\u201d\u2014brings a delight unthinkable for men of his father\u2019s generation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI feel good\u2026 content. When I cook, I feel relaxed. I enjoy.\u201d<\/p>\n For Babu, cooking has become more than just a practice of joy and satisfaction\u2014it represents a reimagining of what it means to be a Tamil man. His meals provide a link between generations, blending the past and the present while modeling new ways of expressing masculine care. It is not just about the food\u2014it is about transforming patriarchal distance into intimate connection, nourishing his family both physically and emotionally in ways his father never could.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSaddan cubes salmon for his Jaffna-style meen kulambu (fish curry). \t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n In Jaffna, Saddan\u2019s role with food was minimal. While his sisters apprenticed in the kitchen, he and his brothers gathered firewood or fetched garden vegetables. They learned the taste of home but not its creation.<\/p>\n Displacement changed everything. At 19, Saddan found himself at an Indian boarding school with two other young men. Tired of cafeteria fare, they decided to cook their own meals on a dormitory fire stove. Like his older brother Babu, Saddan\u2019s displacement disrupted traditional Tamil gender roles that had kept men from engaging in the intimate work of cooking. While their father had wielded authority from outside the kitchen, both brothers found themselves drawn into the daily practices of care that their mother and sisters had once managed alone. His mother sent handwritten recipes, and through burnt paruppu (lentils) and undercooked chicken, they learned.<\/p>\n \u201cWhatever I ate in Sri Lanka, I\u2019m having it here,\u201d he responds proudly.<\/p>\n Saddan\u2019s love of cooking is undeniable decades later. What began as a necessity became a means of transforming loss into nourishment, a way to bridge the distance between his past and his present. In the kitchen, he found not only sustenance but also connection, stitching together the threads of his identity and memories in each meal.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKarthika liberally seasons the mutton for her curry.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Steam rises from the back patio, where Karthika works over two propane burners. She shakes unmeasured spices from unmarked containers onto a foil pan of mutton while managing large pots of green beans and eggplant. Though her setup looks improvised\u2014a folding table, industrial-size spice tubs\u2014her movements are precise. Her daughter films each step, trying to capture what can\u2019t be written down.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you feel like you want to write your recipes down?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe problem is\u2026 I don\u2019t measure.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNobody here measures!\u201d<\/p>\n The irony is that Karthika learned Tamil cooking not from her mother, who carefully guarded her kitchen expertise, but from her father, Chandran. As a young man, he lost his right arm in a train accident in Sri Lanka. During years apart from her mother, Karthika watched her father cook by instinct, relying on touch, taste, and smell instead of written recipes. With Chandran gone, Karthika now passes on knowledge the same way\u2014through shared moments at the stove, trusting in the inherited intuition that transcends formal instruction.<\/p>\n \u201cBut if you don\u2019t measure, how will they learn?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cI\u2019m teaching her!\u201d<\/p>\n For Karthika, care comes in the form of shared cooking experiences and unwritten recipes. These moments\u2014unquantifiable, but deeply significant\u2014allow her to pass on not just food, but also the lessons of resilience and adaptation. The food she prepares carries the essence of her family\u2019s history and her father\u2019s ingenuity, encapsulated in every unmeasured pinch of spice.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tShakuntala cleans coriander for her rasam, a traditional soup or broth made with tamarind, tomatoes, spices, and herbs.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Shakuntala, as the eldest child and daughter, didn\u2019t grow up with the rest of her siblings. She was shuffled between relatives\u2019 homes and boarding schools, never feeling a sense of stability. Cooking became a forced function. \u201cThat\u2019s not something like they train you, and then you go on a job,\u201d she reflects. \u201cWhen you move around a lot like me, you are asked to do a little job, like peeling the onions, scraping the coconut. This is how you start.\u201d<\/p>\n In the years before she married and left for the United States, Shakuntala worked at a school she had once attended. She became close to a colleague, who she calls \u201cthe best cook\u201d she\u2019s ever met, and found stability and guidance she\u2019d never experienced before. Over fifty years later, Shakuntala remembers this time fondly, of the care she received.<\/p>\n \u201cMost of the cooking I learned from her\u2026 The best time of my life was with her.\u201d<\/p>\n For Shakuntala, food represents respect\u2014both the respect of learning from someone who cared for her and the respect she continues to show through cooking. Through food, she honors the lessons learned from others and passes them forward.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThushy peels red onion for his mutton kothu roti, a dish made of chopped flatbread mixed and mashed together with mutton curry, vegetables, and eggs.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cIf you find any Sri Lankans here, you become friends,\u201d\u00a0<\/em>says Thushy of his life in Raleigh, North Carolina. After twenty years in Rochester, he and his wife built a new community with eight Tamil Sri Lankan families. Their shared history of displacement and nonlinear journeys maps itself in familiar tastes and rhythms\u2014though strangers before migration, they recognize home and feel cared for in their shared meals.<\/p>\n \u201cEveryone comes and we talk about a lot of things\u2026Food is a big part.\u201d<\/p>\n For Thushy, cooking for others becomes more than sustenance; it is a form of bonding that transcends individual histories, weaving together a collective memory that binds his new community. Each meal served is an act of care, a gesture that welcomes others into a shared experience of remembrance and belonging. Through food, Thushy and his new neighbors create a space where they can find connection, comfort, and, ultimately, home.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tAmutha minces garlic and ginger for her spicy prawn pirattal (shrimp fry).\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Some recipes remain out of reach for Amutha\u2014appam and sambal resist mastery, curry fell away when her boys didn\u2019t love it, Jaffna-style snack recipes never recovered their creators as a result of displacement and war. Health constraints moved some dishes like kothu roti from staple to luxury. But more than lost recipes, she worries about lost rhythms of tradition.<\/p>\n \u201cDo you think your kids will carry on some of this?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cNot mine. I\u2019m sure they love it, but they won\u2019t have the same lifestyles\u2026 they\u2019re too different.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet her sons sought knowledge before going off to college: \u201cWhen do you put this? How much is this, this, this?\u201d\u00a0<\/em>Their insistence on learning recipes and her style of cooking becomes its own form of care\u2014preserving not just flavors, but ways of being that help her hold on to a piece of her past.<\/p>\n \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tCredit: <\/span> \t\t\t\t\t\t \n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThurka preps mutton at Karthika\u2019s house before a big family celebration.\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n \u201cSomehow, I\u2019ve become the accidental family historian,\u201d Thurka reflects. \u201cAfter decades documenting others\u2019 migrations, I turned to my own family\u2019s food stories in 2022, when my uncle, Chandran, passed away during the COVID-19 pandemic. At cutting boards and stoves, I collected more than recipes\u2014I gathered fragments of memory that, shared between relatives, completed forgotten stories.\u201d<\/p>\n Documenting these food practices became a form of care,\u00a0opening unexpected channels of communication. Her questions brought forth vivid memories of kitchens, gardens, and shared meals. Through food, stories of loss and resilience emerged in ways that felt natural, even healing.<\/p>\n Two years later, Thurka\u2019s phone still buzzes with updates: Babu sending garden photos from Rochester. These ongoing conversations suggest that care, like cooking, is never finished\u2014it continues to evolve, finding new expressions across generations and distances. In gathering these stories, Thurka has learned that remembering together is its own form of nurturing, a way of strengthening family bonds even as we acknowledge what has been lost.<\/p>\n These food stories reveal how displacement, while severing countless connections, can also spark new forms of care and belonging.<\/p>\n \u201cThrough everyday acts of cooking and feeding others, my family has created something remarkable: a web of relationships that stretches across continents yet remains as intimate as a shared meal.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Article begins When Shanthy left her coastal home in Jaffna, Sri Lanka, in 1970 for Chicago,\u00a0she carried ways of caring that would reshape her family\u2019s bonds through war and displacement.\u00a0Over the next fifteen years, as violence against Tamils escalated, her eight siblings\u2014Shakuntala, Chandran, Babu, Nala, Saddan, Kala, Amutha, and Thushy\u2014and their parents would scatter across […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":88244,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11767],"tags":[760,11447,7834,2074,21993,583,4717],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-88243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-anthropology","tag-care","tag-connection","tag-displacement","tag-food","tag-forced","tag-memory","tag-stories"],"yoast_head":"\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSumi Somaskanda<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Shanthy](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Shanthy_AN13668514-856x482.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSumi Somaskanda<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Kala](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Kala_AN13668353-856x482.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nKala: Care as Remembering What You Can\u2019t Have<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSumi Somaskanda<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Nala](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/13668363-856x482.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nNala: Care as Reconceptualizing Tradition<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSumi Somaskanda<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Babu](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Babu_AN13668589-856x482.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nBabu: Care as New Traditions<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThurka Sangaramoorth<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Saddan](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Saddan_AN-856x642.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nSaddan: Care through Staving off Longing<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKrishika Karunaharan<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Karthika](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Karthika_AN-1-856x1141.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nChandran and Karthika: Care as Unwritten Recipes<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tSumi Somaskanda<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Shakuntala](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Shakuntala_AN13668504-856x482.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nShakuntala: Care as Paying Respect<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThurka Sangara<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Thushy](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Thushy_AN-856x1141.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nThushy: Care in New Communities<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tThurka Sangaramoorthy<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Amutha](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Amutha_AN-856x642.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nAmutha: Care as Making Time for Older Rhythms\u00a0<\/h2>\n
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\tKrishika Karunaharan<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n![\"Thurka](\"https:\/\/www.anthropology-news.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/02\/Thurka_AN-856x642.jpg\")
\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\nThurka: Care as New Bonds, Asking Questions\u00a0<\/h2>\n