CW: This story details racism and sexual violence. Please take care of yourselves. <3
Cities in the West are swaddled in myth. New York is a postcard of Sex-in-the-City glitz and pizza slices under the statue of liberty — not the rats, a rent-to-income ratio of as high as 81.6%, or the nearly one-in-seven public school students who went homeless last year.
London is the land of Big Ben selfies, Shoreditch warehouse parties, and tourists eager to catch a glimpse of royalty at Buckingham Palace — never the violent, racist rallies, the high rates of phone theft, or the knife crime. Paris glimmers in reels of picnics under the Eiffel Tower, but travellers don’t often reduce the city to its pickpockets, ongoing mass strikes and piled-up rubbish.
Meanwhile, cities in India are rarely granted the same romantic filter. Delhi is “dangerous.” Mumbai is “chaotic.” Kolkata is “polluted”.
On TikTok, searching for “Indian street food” results in countless videos by creators who’ve flown to India to point their cameras at particularly unhygienic street-food stalls in order to ragebait viewers. These outsiders frame themselves as searching for “cheap eats” then spend barely any rupees somewhere dirty – insinuating that to eat well and affordably in India means compromising on hygiene.
While these tourists may be none the wiser about the greater impacts of their sensationalised content, their fascination with showcasing the dirtiest parts of the country and tagging it “real India” is fueling the normalisation of casual racism beyond their unmediated TikTok comment sections.
But there’s another India online — one that highlights regions not often spotlighted, displays the food scene with pride, credits it for historical and global influence, and hums life beyond poverty porn. And 28-year-old British-Indian Lily Baria is reclaiming that story one stainless-steel lunchbox at a time.
Lily’s “TiffinTok” videos — filmed from her Goan balcony and watched by millions — are as much about food as they are about the restoration of dignity at a time when South-Asian hate comes to a rolling boil.
When Lily joined TikTok in March this year, she was shocked to see how Indians were being perceived online. Scrolling, she stumbled across an “Indian hate movement” and noticed an unsettling pattern from tourists going out of their way to depict the country in a certain light.
“I was like, ‘Oh, my God,’” she told me in an interview.
Witnessing such hateful commentary, Lily decided to get creative – the aim being to water down the mass of bleak content getting its kicks representing Indian people as the butt of a joke.
Earlier this year, she and her boyfriend signed up for a tiffin delivery service. The common multi-stacked stainless steel lunchbox (AKA a tiffin) is commonly found around Asia and separates different components of a meal.
For Lily, a cook whips up a homemade Goan Catholic lunch every day: a cuisine that combines Indian and Portuguese flavours and is often spicy, tangy and meat-heavy. No menu is provided, but surprise-lover Lily embraces the unknown element of the service.
Almost every day, Lily sits on her balcony overlooking lush tropical Goan forest, props up her phone, and reveals what she will be eating for lunch layer by layer – showcasing regional cuisine not often known outside of India.
Within a few months of posting about these mystery boxes, Lily’s videos garnered millions of views — a reach she never expected to receive. Fans have now nicknamed her “Tiffin Lady” and dubbed her the queen of “TiffinTok.”
“Out of everything that I’ve posted about India and trying to show that India isn’t what you see on social media, I never expected tiffins to be the one that really brought everyone together,” Lily said.
Her videos are undoubtedly lighthearted and fun to the general public; however, to people with Indian heritage, Lily’s content is a palette cleanser amidst the sea of racist anti-Indian sentiment.
Swelling South Asian hate in the west
Recent elections in the US, Canada, the UK, and Australia have seen immigration take center stage in political messaging. Residents in these regions face soaring living costs and inadequate access to safe, affordable housing – so concerns about their quality of life are running high. Instead of addressing these problems, politicians, corporations and western media have colluded to amplify perceived threats to national identity, leveraging anti-immigration sentiment to shift attention away from systemic issues.
It’s working. Most recently, more than 110,000 people in Central London marched against immigration at a demonstration organized by far-right, anti-immigrant and anti-Islam activist Tommy Robinson. Brits are harassing and threatening refugee women from outside their hotels, protesting against providing emergency accommodation to refugee children without parents, holding far-right political rallies in towns already gripped with racism, and violently attacking people because of their race – there are stabbings, street beatings and mosques under siege.
In September, a British-born Sikh woman in her 20s was brutally raped by two men in broad daylight on a busy road in Oldbury. “You don’t belong in this country, get out,” the rapists reportedly told her.
In Australia, anti-immigration rallies erupted nationwide in August, October and November, which saw neo-Nazis address thousands from the steps of parliament and police protect them – whilst inciting and unleashing violence on counter-protestors.
In a screen recording of a livestream from the August protests, one speaker can be heard saying, “India is the way it is because it is full of Indians.” The crowd laughs and cheers.
He goes on: “Australia used to be the way Australia was because it used to be full of white Australians. If you import the third world into the first world, the first world will become the third world. … Our past is brighter than our future … because demographics is destiny.”
In Canada, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue said anti-South Asian hate is “skyrocketing both on- and offline”, with targeted hate crimes more than tripling since before the pandemic.
A similar pattern can be observed in the US. According to a report, anti-South Asian hate has spiked – both after the federal election and also amidst Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral win in New York City.
Whether it’s casual sneers targeting Indian street food online, overt racism screamed at rallies in Britain and its colonies, or unthinkable social media responses to the Air India plane tragedy, which killed 260 people – this rampant violence from Western society is impacting Indians no matter where they live.
The beef with Indian street food
Lily pointed out that Tiktok is an especially convenient platform for content creators furthering their racist agendas against Indian people, as the app is banned in India.
“They have gone online … where they know [we] won’t see what they post, and they’re spreading hatred,” she said. “[Travellers] have zoomed in on one tiny part and … they believe that to be all of India, and that’s not true at all.”
There certainly is poverty, she added, and it’s an issue that needs attention, but “that’s not all of [India].”
@lilybaria South Indian vegetarian banana leaf thali! From Sappadu in Goa! (There is also one in Ahmedabad) #thali #indianfood #southindian #bananaleaf #kerala ♬ original sound – Lily Baria
“If you want to go to India and show the poorest parts, you should at least be doing it in a way that you are bringing awareness to these people’s situations, making some kind of a funding link, actually educating people and helping these people that you are profiting from, but they are not doing that!
“Street food you can find everywhere, all over and from all ranges … you can find super hygienic, clean, stainless steel things. You can find both [more and less established eateries] in the same place, especially in places like Bombay and Delhi …. [But] they won’t go there.
“They deliberately avoid those ones, and they still cost you the same price.”
Reduced to poverty
State-level surveys and local initiatives suggest that many regions in India have indeed seen improvements in living conditions, even if inequalities persist.
Despite this encouraging direction, Lily said, “The perception of India is it’s all slums.”
“You don’t see people begging on the streets here [in Goa] like maybe in the city, in the busiest area … [or] in any [major] city all over the world.”
“I think [my videos] challenge what [viewers] believe in their head, but the fact that they want to double down on their own beliefs and not the reality, I think that’s just racism.”
@lilybaria Eating hygenic street food in India! #india #panipuri #streetfood #indianstreetfood #goa #fyp ♬ original sound – Lily Baria
While she said some commenters have accused her of trying to avoid and hide poverty in India, she argues she is just trying to add perspective to the kind of life most Indian residents experience.
“[Poverty] is not blanket wide, there’s plenty of lovely, developed parts of India.”
A palate cleanser
While Lily didn’t grow up with the representation she wished for, she is delighted when people say her content makes them feel prideful in today’s media.
Determined to showcase India for its rich diversity, Lily has found considerable success in reshaping misconceptions about the country and the people. Thanks to the popularization of TiffinTok, Lily said she’s noticed incremental shifts in people who used to generalize and reduce India to stereotypes. Some who reacted to videos she shared of beautiful Indian eateries have apologized.
“[They] said, ‘I’m sorry. I used to think that it was all slums, and I understand what you’re saying now about people only showing the worst parts,” she said, adding that some are eager to visit the country as well.
@lilybaria Imagine paying money to visit another country just to go out of your way to find the absolute cheapest and worst food you can find, just to humiliate an entire nation on the internet. Is it by force ??? #india #indianfood #indiastreetfood #fyp ♬ CUBA – Cavendish
Despite feeling like she had to endure “the worst of the worst” of the internet’s racism, Lily said she is proud of the fight and how people in her community are feeling uplifted.
Going forth, she hopes viewers are inspired to travel to India and take part in showing its vibrant culture.
Also…
“I hope that filming poor people stops trending.”