Part memoir, part cookbook, playfully uses food to talk about economics, society and India, and makes unexpected connections between what we eat and how we live. This in turn, also becomes a basis to examine how economics influences culture and eating habits. Writer and critic Nilanjana Roy spoke to Abhijit Banerjee, Nobel Prize-winning economist, writer, and cookbook author, and Cheyenne Olivier, the illustrator and artist whose work brings a parallel narrative to their book Chhaunk. In a conversation with Scroll, Banerjee and Olivier talked about their earliest memories of food, the politics of the dining table, why everyone has a right to pleasurable food, and how its scarcity will affect each of us. Excerpts from the conversation:

The first question I wanted to ask was, you know, the title. Chhaunk, for any one of us who lives in India, is the act of basically adding spices or curry leaves or a few other things, tomatoes, etc. It’s so evocative – that word Chhaunk. It captures both the sound and the sense of cooking. And I wonder whether you could take us back to your earliest memories of watching your family cook or learning to cook yourself. You mentioned in the book that it brought you closer...