Profane cooks and minor condiments: Chutnification and "cooking the world" in Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children

The exploration of food in Salman Rushdie's canonical novel Midnight's Children (1981) is neither provincial nor an act of strategic essentialism. Food as a central artistic device has been understudied in the contexts of this novel, its ambitious scope and transnational implications left unexplored through a contextual lens. This article uncovers the hidden significance of "pure" or sacred cooks in the subcontinental imagination and the ramifications of such comparison for the consideration of abject embodiment as a site of creativity and transcendence in the text. It also reveals the ways in which Rushdie both reinstates and reworks a South Asian understanding of food in his use of pickles as portable magic.