Carrots over caviar | Why India’s urban young are adopting more plant-forward dining options

The ‘new vegetarianism’ that’s becoming popular among India’s younger metropolitan consumers is not rooted in religion or caste. It is also different from the fad diets of five years ago

The only time I take a break from dining on the Ganges Voyager, billed as India’s first vegan cruise, is at Murshidabad. We dock there one rainy afternoon and navigate the town’s frayed provinciality to visit the 18th-century Hazarduari Palace, of a hundred doors. It was the home of the erstwhile nawabs of Bengal — built, ironically, by the descendants of Mir Jafar, the betrayer at Plassey, who sided with Clive and whose infamous act tilted the balance of power in India for 200 years thereafter.

The museum at the once opulent palace has stunning Mughal memorabilia. There is Shah Jahan’s travelling chair, Nadir Shah’s lance and the palanquin of Zeb-un-Nissa, Aurangzeb’s daughter. They lie in dust-covered glory. This tryst with nostalgia spurs us on to the steps of the Hazarduari restaurant, owned by the last nawab’s family, to take in its air of disrepair, faux antiques, faded family photos and a lineup of Mughlai dishes: biryani, rezala, qorma, do piyazah. It’s dining in pursuit of history, not necessarily taste.

But taste has been aplenty, and meat barely missed, during the week on the Ganges Voyager. Sailing upstream from Kolkata to the Sundarbans, stopping en route at small towns and villages full of the remnants of Bengal’s Mughal and colonial past, listening to stories about their art, architecture, people — all this over imaginative Bengali dishes.

Chef Ranjoy, in charge of the ship, purchases from the small mandis and wet marts of these towns things such as asmani chillies (that grow facing skywards, and hence the name), wood-apple, the last unripe mangoes of the season, gondhoraj lime, brinjal and fresh turmeric. These find their way into fermented wood-apple chutney, shukto on toast, thalas of gobindobhog rice, tender plantain and poshto gravies, turmeric-ed barbecued brinjal, jhal muri spiked with mustard oil from a homemade mango pickle, and even a birthday cake made with banana and coconut.

Of the 50 odd people on the ship — paying around ₹6 lakh plus (double occupancy) for a 10-day voyage by special interest travel major Antara Cruises — there are strict vegans from Germany, the U.S. and even Vietnam, but there is also an Indian set that’s more flexitarian, not strictly vegetarian. The plant-based Bengali regional food is a hit with all.

Over gondhoraj margaritas, one intrepid American traveller confesses one evening that this is the best she has “ever eaten”, having been on many other currently fashionable vegan cruises around the world, from Brazil to Spain. “I was on a cruise in Brazil and there too they cooked with local ingredients from the rainforests but it wasn’t as delicious… India has so many flavours.”

India has many stories, too, around its diverse food cultures. And it is these that are birthing a new vegetarianism as young, metropolitan millennial and Gen Z diners embrace food with plant-forward menus and experiences that go beyond taste to tell stories of ingredients and their communities.