Chutnification

Chutnification

“chutney + (-fication)= chutnification meaning “the process of becoming chutney”

The word “chutnification” was coined by Salman Rushdie in his novel, Midnight’s Children. Chutney is an ancient way of preserving seasonal fruits or vegetable so that it could be tasted all the year round. But, the spices and minerals that are used in preserving it eventually kills the actual taste of the preserved vegetable or fruit. It starts having its own smell/taste and ends up in our daily meals either as a side-dish or as a dessert. Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children is not the first novel to exhibit or employ chutnification. More-or-less, all the post-colonial writers tried this in some way or other. For example, Chinua Achebe’s seminal trilogy Things Fall Apart, No Longer at Ease, Arrow of God as well as Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood happened way before Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children. But those novels were more busy at ‘creating’ history without proper documentations to challenge the historylessness the Igbo people or Swahili Community was ‘suffering from’ therefore remain in the ‘fictions only’ category.