From Sea to Surwa: Recipes from Andaman Islands

From Sea to Surwa is a research cookbook published by the Azim Premji University in 2024. This book is written by Madhuri Ramesh and Chandralekha C., researchers affiliated with the university. It looks into the food and foodways, specifically marine, of communities which migrated to the Andaman Islands. The book is available in both English and Hindi.

The book notes that a study of ‘foodways’ – a study of a community’s cuisine as well as its customs, beliefs and practices around food – is important because food reflects a community’s culture and environment. Studying food from the Andaman Islands is of particular interest because the ‘islanders’ as they are now known aren’t a homogenous group but a community of people whose ancestors migrated to the islands from various parts of mainland India and Southeast Asia. Since access to the indigenous communities of the islands is highly restricted, the researchers limit their scope to ‘settler cuisines’ – cuisines of residents with roots in India, Burma and Sri Lanka.

Since several past studies on fisheries in the islands have focused on male voices, this project covers women’s use of marine resources. In pursuit of this, the researchers met with and interviewed women from different parts of the archipelago between June and November 2023. The locations covered were Wandoor, Junglighat, Bambooflat, Guptapara, Prothrapur and Nayagaon in South Andaman; Hanspuri, Karmatang and Webi in Middle and North Andaman; and Katchal in Nicobar.

This 64-page book is divided into seven sections, each highlighting recipes specific to a communit: Ranchi Recipes; Moplah Recipes; Telugu Recipes; Bengali Recipes; Tamil Recipes; Karen Recipes; and Sri Lankan Tamil Recipes.

Each section of the book also provides some history on how the settlers came to the islands, their reasons for migration and the work they did after settling here. The women interviewed for the study narrate their own experiences of growing up on the island and the ways in which their food has evolved over the years through shared recipes with settlers from other regions.

The research highlights how some aspects of food are unique to different settler communities while others are shared across cultures. Moreover, many recipes have similarities to recipes from the mainland and parts of Southeast Asia indicating a continuous connection between these regions. The authors also emphasise how exploring the foodways of a community can provide an entry point into recording women’s voices and perspectives and bring focus on the “importance of marine resources to the nutritional security of many rural households in the islands.”