Sarah K. Khan
Undisciplined Pleasures
Vigilant Defiance 2.0

South Asia is a world of stories. Mythological and folk tales offer rich cosmological imaginations. Plants – their roots, shoots, leaves and flowers – weave seamlessly into glorious tales of this world and beyond. In these stories, plants are never sedentary or unintelligent beings, but active agents that built community and enable imaginative narrative plots. Plants house transmigrated souls of the divine, human and other sentient beings. For example, the sweet fragrant jasmine is said to emerge from the churning of the Ocean of Milk. The Tamarind tree, ever delicious for its sour fruit is a home for myriad spirits. Despite its considerable shade, we were advised not to rest under it, lest a spirit possess us! The Banana tree’s short life is entangled in tales of matrimony and children. The peepal tree (sacred fig) and the banana tree are considered husband and wife if they grow together. The sesame tree believed to have emerged when Lord Vishnu’s sweat drops fell on Earth. Plants were ubiquitous and essential – for food, as digestives, and cures for various ailments. I acquired this enchanted vision of plants despite being raised as an urban child. It is this rich imaginative history that fuels Sarah Khan’s Undisciplined Pleasures, Vigilant Defiance Series.

Once we entered school, however, a postcolonial education disenchanted our love of plants. The scientific Latin names we had to learn by rote erased the luxurious and magical contexts of our childhoods. They severed plants from the world we lived and knew. Botanical education, its universal terminology seemed sterile, abstract, absolute and without context. A study in botany and its Latin nomenclature was a study in alienation from the natural world. But learning the scientific term in Latin was enforced, and we were assured that because it was scientific, it was universal. Scientists across the world used the same terminology.

A postcolonial education transformed familiar plants into alien creatures. I loved the sweetness of dal cheeni (cheeni is sugar in Hindi), or pattai (pattai means piece of bark in Tamil), but once in school, it became Cinnamomum. I learned that there was “true” cinnamon, Cinnamomum verum, and the more popular Cinnamomum cassia. The local meanings that captured my experiences of chewing on the sweetness of the bark in a spicy curry was lost. Turmeric was manjal (yellow in Tamil). And so, on it goes…The local words for spices often described the spice or how it was used, it was embedded in lived lives.

Why couldn’t plants retain their local names? It was much later in life (not part of a botanical education) that I discovered the reason was for colonialists to be able to identify plants, and more efficiently extract the rich botanical resources from the colonies. Treatises like the Dutch commissioned Hortus malabaricus of the 17th century catalogued the rich flora of the Malabar region. Indeed, rich resources in any land, whether spices or oil or minerals, are historically seen as a “curse,” since the rich resources attract attention and intense interest for colonial powers.

Black pepper, the spice that was perhaps South Asia’s resource curse brought the colonists to its coast, first as traders and eventually as colonizers. The kaali mirch (kaali means black in Hindi) or kari milagu (kari is black in Tamil) again describe the plant and spice. This became Piper nigrum in my botanical education. There was a science to the spices – a logic to which spices you used and the combination you used them in. Spices were use each day not only in cooking but as perfumes, insect repellents, and as a cure for any number of ailments. Boiled cumin water helped as a digestive, an anti-histamine or as an anti-viral agent. Fennel and cloves helped with digestion. Ginger helped with flatulence. Spices abounded everywhere. Indeed, modern pharmaceuticals owe a great deal of their knowledge from indigenous medical wisdom from all across the word. The ongoing exploitation of this knowledge, the biopiracy of colonized worlds continues.

Sarah Khan’s representation of the book of delights highlights the ecological, historical sensorium of plants. Eighteen powerful and fully frontal femmes wield appliances and tools – rolling pins, knives, swords, a German Lugar, rulers, spoons, spears, wine glasses, fire and blow torches – for a cauldron of possibilities. These are not mere tools but tactile and sensual agents, patterned and bejeweled in gorgeous hues. The figures unleash the power of cooking, hunting, gathering, distillations, healing, perfumery. Rejecting any binary understanding of western femininity and masculinity, Khan presents a powerhouse of the eighteen goddesses. Uzza with her rolling pin and sword, Amrita and her wine glass and carafe, Fere Alem with her herbs and sword, Gudit and her blow torch. Razia wields powerful weapons but is also decked out in gorgeous anklets and earrings. The characters carry traditional tools of the kitchen and the battle field, blurring the lines of domesticity and war. The herbs, vegetables, wine alongside the rolling pins, swords, spears and cleavers foretell the power of the kitchen. And you may never be sure what is brewing!

Sarah Khan’s figures remind us that the world could have been otherwise. The histories they evoke remind us that other futures were possible. The characters force us to reckon with long suppressed histories, paths not taken, other words and worlds, unmuted.