Amitav Ghosh

And, you know, customs and that kind of thing.

And it often happens that a child...

is born into a family that's vegetarian, and they have memories of being non-vegetarian before.

And weirdly enough, they become very insistent, you know, until the families actually give in and let them eat what they want.

And the same thing happens the other way around, so that children are born into non-vegetarian families, and they have very strong memories of being vegetarians before, and they simply cannot stomach

non-vegetarian food.

That's perfectly possible, but I very much doubt it.

I think something very profound has changed, especially in Western diets, so that children, you know, become increasingly fussy.

I mean, again, there are many documented cases just like this.

where the child will simply refuse to eat whatever they're served.

In fact, you know, after reading my book, a very eminent writer, and not Indian, actually, from the Middle East, told me that they had a case like this in their family.

Wow.

Yeah.

I mean, since this book came out, I mean, on the receiving end of so many stories from so many unexpected people,

Oh, they're incredibly important.

You know, food is the primary medium through which human beings understand their environment.

It seems to be the case in the modern West where, you know, you walk into a supermarket and nobody knows where the food comes from.

But certainly I grew up in a world where really this connection to our world and to our environment through food was very, very important.

And I think everywhere, you know, there's a sense in which food creates a sense of identity, a sense of belonging.

And this is certainly very much the case in Bengal, which is where I'm from.