The Journey of India review: Ambitious, maximalist and captures India and its progress since Independence

There’s a moment in the first episode of Discovery’s The Journey of India when the chef Alex Sanchez (co-founder of Americano, a restaurant in Mumbai’s Kala Ghoda) sums up his feelings about Indian cuisine: “First of all, there isn’t one unified Indian cuisine because there’s so much diversity here. It’s very difficult to present one standardized version of it.” Sanchez is correct, of course, and he might as well have been talking about the docu-series he’s a part of.

The Journey of India, produced by Black Iris for Warner Bros. Discovery, is ambitious and maximalist and seeks nothing less than to capture India (and its progress since Independence) across certain major narrative axes. The first episode, for example, is called ‘The Land of Flavours’; it focuses on the seemingly infinite variety of cuisines within India and is hosted by the noted chef Vikas Khanna . The second episode is ‘The Land of Green Guardians’; hosted by actor Rana Daggubati alongside author and conservationist Latika Nath, it focuses on environmental/wildlife conservation efforts across the country. There’s a future episode planned around Bollywood, with the actress Kajol set to take viewers on a trip to a real-life Bollywood set. And every episode opens with a broad-strokes, suitably gushing introduction delivered by superstar Amitabh Bachchan .

For the most part, The Journey of India succeeds in delivering a kind of ‘greatest hits package’ in these first two episodes. There are gorgeous visuals of Kashmiri cooks preparing a traditional multi-course feast or wazwan, weather-beaten Rajasthani men preparing laal maas, one of Calcutta’s most famous sweet shop owners describing their recipe for the roshogolla, and so on. Vikas Khanna himself holds court in New York amidst a group of his peers (ie fellow desi chefs in America) and serves them a most curious item of his own design: a Durian parfait (with the fruit being sourced from Shillong) with a nankhatai base, pineapples forming the intermediate layer. It looked fascinating and I bet it tasted amazing, too. More importantly, there is a well-defined narrative arc here, exemplified by the segment on Kerala’s pepper trade—we follow the spice straight from the growing to its final form on our plates, and it’s quite a journey. There’s a very interesting bit here about eating locally sourced foods which will appeal to younger audiences in particular (and also ties up with the second episode’s theme, which is conservationism).

The only sore spot in this episode was its wholly unnecessary segment on the Akshaya Patra Foundation and its mid-day meal service. Firstly, it’s tonally disparate from the rest of the episode and plays like a PR video. It absolutely does not belong here for that reason alone. But also, the segment features the chef Sanjeev Kapoor who praises Akshaya Patra whole-heartedly — which would be fine, except that the show never identifies Kapoor as a part of Akshaya Patra’s ‘Consultatory Council’, as advertised by AP’s own website. Even if Kapoor had not represented himself as an Akshaya Patra ambassador to the show’s makers, a simple Google search would have revealed this fact. This is shoddy journalism on the show’s part and reflects poorly on Discovery.

The second episode, thankfully, has no such blunders. Rana Daggubati and Latika Nath lead a confident, fast-paced narrative about some of India’s most remarkable conservation stories. We see how the national parks at Corbett and Kaziranga and Ranthambore go about their business and also keep reinventing themselves to stay up-to-date and relevant in the 21st century. We meet truly remarkable individuals like Jamuna Tudu, the 41-year-old conservationist who took on the timber mafia, Naxalites and apathetic government officials to protect the forest near her village in Jharkhand. It’s inspiring and quite instructive to hear Tudu on the gender-related aspects of conservationism.

The reason children in particular are encouraged to watch Discovery documentaries is that they generally do a very good job of summarising the essential aspects of any topic, the bare bones of any kind of history at all. The Journey of India, too, is another slickly produced entry in the Discovery ledger. Apart from the odd outdated reference every now and then and the aforementioned editorial oversight re: Akshaya Patra, it is an enjoyable and accessible deep dive into the country’s bag of riches.

Aditya Mani Jha is a Delhi-based independent writer and journalist, currently working on a book of essays on Indian comics and graphic novels.

Read all the  Latest News ,  Trending News ,  Cricket News ,  Bollywood News ,  India News  and  Entertainment News  here. Follow us on  Facebook ,  Twitter  and  Instagram .