Food has been one of the important literary themes across cultures, historical periods and ages. It functions not only as a source of nourishment but also a complex symbolic factor which acts on social relations, emotional resonance and cultural identities and hierarchies. In literary texts, food often operates as a foreground where memory, belonging, respect and inspiration negotiate each other and question class, gender, labour and cultural continuity. Literary food studies is an evolving interdisciplinary field that studies both the tangible and symbolic aspects of food. It highlights how food references shape narratives of identity, affect and order. Concerning the Indian literary texts, food representations acquire a specific significance that these factors negotiate between tradition and modernity, migration and rootedness, and regional specificity and national or global imaginings. Calcutta, a city rich with colonial history, a vibrant literary culture and layered food traditions, is an ideal site for studying these processes.

This research will study food narratives set in and around Calcutta textualities and through such texts to reinvent food identity by utilizing food as cultural text and food as lived practice.  The research is situated within literary food studies and digital humanities, and engagement is made a central conceptual and methodological tool. Currently, engagement functions across multiple intersections: engagement among readers and texts, among literary narratives and socio-historical contexts, and among humanistic engagement and emergent digital technologies. The analysis of digital tools involves not simply their instruments but also how computational measures structure quantitative responsibilities, as well as interpretative practices that can count as knowledge in the humanities disciplines.

The goal of the research is to explore these research issues. The first one looks at how literary texts use food both in the service of narrative and as a symbol to signify values in society.  Food that appears in these texts often signifies class, domesticity, ritual, and cultural nostalgia. However, this also unfolds tensions evoked by urbanisation, displacement, and changing modes of consumption. The study also engages with culinary references that enhance readers’ sensory and affective experiences, thus focusing on the relationship between textual representation and lived cultural experience. Third, it maps the food cultures digitally to examine and trace the geographical, historical and representational evolution of food practices as they appear in the literary narratives of Calcutta.

The paper applies a mixed methodology that combines close reading and digital humanities techniques. The selected texts are analyzed at the level of the text, taking into consideration repeated references to food, the space of consumption such as kitchen, market, community dining spaces, and the meanings ascribed to dishes and eating patterns. Thematic coding is applied to these texts to discover patterns around memory, identity, labour, and hierarchy. A qualitative literary analysis ensures the relevance of the study within the humanistic discipline, while also accounting for diversity in interpretation.

To complement the thematic analysis, digital tools such as NVivo and others are used, to systematise them and to compare. Suitable GIS-based mapping tools are employed to visualise the scenario of food culture by linking literary mentions with neighbourhoods, markets or areas within/across Calcutta. This spatialisation of literary data facilitates a kind of scholarly engagement where text and culture are brought together so that food can be examined not only as metaphor but as a practice that is historically determined and situated.

At the core of this methodological framework is a critique of technology itself. The affordances and limitations of digital humanities tools are considered in this study that questions how computational processes mediate interpretation and what forms of knowledge are privileged or obscured. By engaging with these methods, this work contributes to wider conversations in the digital humanities about the critical and ethical use of technology, including data modelling, mapping and other digital methods of analysis. Instead of taking the place of close reading, they are seen as supplementary aids that broaden the interpretive range while keeping human judgement at the centre of analysis.

The research aims to develop effective connections between “texts”, “technologies” and “communities”. By foregrounding engagement both as theme and practice, it contributes to digital humanities scholarship. This shows how food stories can act as repositories of culture, able to carry a restricted history of everyday life. Simultaneously, digital mapping and qualitative analysis techniques can facilitate new engagements with literature, prompting literary studies and cultural histories to dialogue with one another and (new) digital methods.

In the end, the study understands food as text and texture; as material and metaphor that connect literary culture, historical memory and technology. This project will blend literary food studies with digital humanities in Indian narratives. It aims to advance debate on how humanistic inquiry can engage meaningfully with emerging human technologies while also remaining rooted in culture and ethics. Through the use of such methods, it can better understand how food is represented in Indian narratives, and how this shapes our eating habits and identities.

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