Diversity of cuisines and Unity as student

Experience Sharing

By Aditi Kumari, PDM 21

(Volume 5: Issue 1)

This article is about my experience during one of the Academy’s unique events – ‘Ethnic Dinner’. India is a country of ‘Unity in Diversity with different languages, religions, castes, community, etc. Food pattern is one of the key elements and heart of our Indian diversity. Indian cuisine is known for the art of using the right spices in every dish, not just for its flavor but also for its nutritional and medical value. Each state has its unique flavour and technique of cooking. When I got selected in TDA and came, I noticed the diversity of India in our batch. Each of us is from a different state and background. I was very happy to be part of this batch and course as I get to experience different state way of life. We all come together for the reason of helping the poor community. There are many unique events in TDA. Among them, ‘Ethnic Dinner’ is one such event, where the students will prepare their own state dishes. Many of us didn’t know much about the preparation of the dishes. We called our mother and got the ingredients and recipe list. As a group along with our senior batch, we have decided the menu list for the day.

From our state Jharkhand, myself and my senior, Ananya joined together and prepared a snack item called ‘Momo’. I chose an easy dish since I don’t have experience in cooking. The mom hearing that I was cooking, felt very happy and helped me throughout the process. Ananya also helped and she was involved in preparing other dishes also. Together we prepared of 15 dishes representing states from Uttrakhand to Tamil Nadu consisting of main dishes, snacks, sweets, etc. We have helped each other and learned from each other of preparing the cuisines of different states.

We served our dishes to the guests from DHAN (Staff, Field and TDA faculty). We have also displayed a short brief about the dish we prepared with the ingredients and its health benefits. It was a very fun experience, we became tasters of food than cooking, especially most of us were around the fish dish prepared by West Bengal students, waiting for the fish fry. Everyone has enjoyed and worked as a team along with seniors. This ethnic dinner is not just a simple function for us, it’s also a part of our learning. The whole year, our faculty, TDA workers, and DHAN employees serve us with knowledge and help us to share our attitude, skill and knowledge. This event is a way for us to say thank you to all of them with our food. Even though we are from diverse backgrounds and culture, we are united through this event and understand each other’s culture a little better.