Pod#124 - Ahmer Naqvi II - Karachi & the world's best biryanis

Ahmer's back! After saving the music industry in our last chat, this time round we're talking about how to save the food discourse in Pakistan. Specifically with regards to his piece on biryani in Karachi, and how it most definitely is the best city for it in the world and why. This episode is all about how his expansive piece with the Fifty Two came into being. The thought process, the many forms the idea took, the actualization process and the many learnings. The chapters are a bit different for this one since Ahmer, and perhaps this situation too, doesn't lend itself to short bits of conversation. But we have made chapters nonetheless for your benefit, dear consumer of content.   

Things discussed in this episode:  

00:00 Intro 

02:47 Talking about our previous episode, and how this one came around 

05:29 How the idea came about. 

- Ahmer's exile from Karachi & Islamabad's Savor pulao 

- Developing an approach: Mapping Karachi,  8 islands each with their own ethno-cultures 

- Food-media on the internet, the initial plan with BBC Urdu, getting in touch with FiftyTwo 

- Moving back to Karachi, reductive views of city, its muddled histories 

- How long the idea's been percolating and how it is about the city more than just the dish 

- The diversity in the people spoken to and how talking about their biryani gives an insight into their communities too 

- Historical accounts of the introduction of proto-biryani concepts via Arab traders  

- The original residents of the city & region 

25:49 How did he decide which places to include?  

- Wanting to include diversity in communities and types of biryani 

- People he wanted to get but couldn't 

- Wanting to cover as much of the city as possible 

- Visibility of things in the “mainstream” vs on the perceived fringes  

33:28 The differences in how people interviewed talked about their work  

- Variances in history & language 

- People in Pakistan having trouble articulating their own expertise with their crafts 

41:47 Ali tries unsuccessfully to put an umbrella on food, music, art, culture.  

- Nostalgia 

- The food industry and its rapid changes 

- Karhai and Biryani examples of ethnic foods gone mainstream & multicultural 

49:36 Was everything he learned during the process within expectations or revelatory?  

- The feeling of finally accomplishing something he’d been aiming to do for years 

53:53 Does he plan to do more pieces on food in the near future, and how people should try and engage with such topics at a deeper level beyond bants 

58:04 Outro  

LINKS: 

The article: https://fiftytwo.in/story/rice-fat-meat-streets/ 

Ahmer's Twitter: https://twitter.com/karachikhatmal 

The story mapped out: https://twitter.com/karachikhatmal/status/1448894281998127120 

The original Urdu dialogues: https://twitter.com/karachikhatmal/status/1448916463574831131  

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