Nirali Magazine » Print » The Hilsa Alive (But They’re Fading Fast)

The Hilsa Alive (But They’re Fading Fast)

An elegy to the hilsa fish finds its way into Salon.com.

By Nalini Abhiraman, July 3, 2007, Food, Daily, History

This week, Salon’s regular [1] Eat and Drink series features a piece by Cambridge-based food writer Chitrita Banerji. Banerji, who has written for Gourmet and The Boston Globe, delicately turns the piece from general, [2] “Mrs. Sen”–style musings on her Bengali roots and their connection to her craving for freshwater fish, to a contemplative examination of the ilish, or hilsa, the species most central to the Bengali culinary imagination. Industrialization and over-pollution of Bengal’s major rivers have played hard and devastating with hilsa populations; the likelihood that the fish will retain its powerfully symbolic stature, notes Banerji, fades with each season that the number of fish plummets.

More:
[3] Hilsa [Wikipedia]
[4] Review of Banerji’s Life and Food in Bengal [The Hindu]

Article printed from Nirali Magazine: http://niralimagazine.com

URL to article: http://niralimagazine.com/2007/07/the-hilsa-alive-but-theyre-fading-fast/

URLs in this post:
[1] Eat and Drink: http://dir.salon.com/topics/eat_and_drink/
[2] “Mrs. Sen”–style: http://www.google.com/search?q=mrs.+sen&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&r
ls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
[3] Hilsa [Wikipedia]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hilsa
[4] Review of Banerji’s Life and Food in Bengal [The Hindu]: http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/mag/2001/12/30/stories/2001123000060300.htm

Click here to print.