From Naan to Luchi: Bread as a Literary Motif of Memory, Migration, and Belonging along the Grand Trunk Road

DOI

10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_41How to use a DOI?

Keywords

Bread; Grand Trunk Road; Cultural Memory; Postcolonial Literature; Food Studies; Belonging; Hybridity

Abstract

This study analyses bread as a recurring literary motif in texts set on the Grand Trunk Road (from Afghanistan to Chittagong) through the dual lenses of a culinary artifact and a marker of cultural memory, migration, and belonging. The study aims to fill the gap in the scholarly literature where travel and culinary histories of bread such as naan, taftoon, bakarkhani, sheermal, kulcha, and luchi on the Grand Trunk Road is documented, but literary analysis on bread’s transcultural and intertemporal English literary relations is lacking.

The analysis is based on cultural memory theory (Jan Assmann), postmemory (Marianne Hirsch), hybridity (Homi Bhabha), and the semiotics of food (Roland Barthes), with primary texts including Kim (Rudyard Kipling), City of Djinns (William Dalrymple), The Shadow Lines (Amitav Ghosh), Burnt Shadows (Kamila Shamsie), Moth Smoke (Mohsin Hamid), and Kabuliwalar Bangali Bou (Susmita Bandopadhyay)to which close reading will be applied. This framework situates bread in the context of postcolonial food studies, investigating its literary role as a palimpsest of historical layers: Persian introduction, Mughal adaptation, colonial transformation, and commodified globalization.

Preliminary findings indicate that bread in these narratives functions as a mnemonic trigger, a marker of hybridity in contact zones, and a unifying symbol that transcends political borders while retaining regional specificity. In The Shadow Lines, festive breads evoke domestic intimacy and collective memory; in City of Djinns, Delhi’s bread traditions embody Mughal cosmopolitanism; in Kim, roadside breads signify mobility and imperial encounter. Across all texts, bread mediates between tradition and modernity, local attachment and cross-cultural exchange.

Managerial implications for the field of Food Studies include recognising literature as a critical site for documenting and interpreting intangible food heritage, which can inform cultural preservation strategies, heritage tourism, and sustainable culinary practice.

Copyright

© 2026 The Author(s)

Open Access

Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits any noncommercial use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and indicate if changes were made.

Download article (PDF)

TY  - CONF
AU  - Subham Ghosh
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/06/30
TI  - From Naan to Luchi: Bread as a Literary Motif of Memory, Migration, and Belonging along the Grand Trunk Road
BT  - Proceedings of the International Conference on Emerging Food Studies: Intersections of Culture, Science and Sustainability (ICEFS 2026)
PB  - Atlantis Press
SP  - 515
EP  - 524
SN  - 2352-5398
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_41
DO  - 10.2991/978-2-38476-583-6_41
ID  - Ghosh2026
ER  -