Foods for the Souls: Food Rituals in the Diaspora

Food is an important part of ritual in nearly every culture, and a significant way immigrants carry cultural traditions to our new homes. Novice and aspiring chefs alike can join this conversation and cooking demonstration presented by award-winning Twin Cities chef Raghavan Iyer, who will discuss the Hindu tradition of Shraddham—in which specific foods are prepared every year as an offering to the souls of the ancestors to guide them on their journey through the afterlife and toward their next birth.

Chef Iyer will talk with Ragamala Co-Artistic Directors Ranee and Aparna Ramaswamy about his own experiences as a first-generation Indian-American and the ways in which sustaining one’s culinary traditions can make a new place feel like home.

Attendees will be invited to share their questions and help shape this live conversation. Cozy up to your computer, learn about this culinary tradition, and leave the conversation with a new recipe to try on your own!

This event is presented as part of  Ragamala Rooted: Fires of Varanasi and is made possible in part through grants from the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation; the National Endowment for the Arts; the Mardag Foundation; the F.R. Bigelow Foundation; the Marbrook Foundation; The Saint Paul Foundation; the City of St. Paul Cultural Sales Tax Revitalization Program; and the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund.