Pankhuri Agrawal

What does an index or chapter title reveal? How does the author prioritise and arrange her thoughts? How does she create an outline for her artistic or academic work? ‘Whereabouts’ (2021) written in Italian and translated by #JhumpaLahiri is a collection of forty six short vignettes set in an unnamed city. Each vignette stands on its own, but also weaves together a relaxed narrative. Her style is reminiscent of Italo Calvino’s ‘Invisible Cities’ (1972). Her chapter titles immediately transported me to my introductory Spanish language class. If you have ever tried to formally learn a foreign language as an adult, the vignette headings will remind you of a textbook. Adult students are encouraged to learn nouns and verbs through actions that take place in various places - the supermarket, the museum, the coffee bar and so on. The place names and the associated prepositions - on, in at, upon, dance happily on the contents page of her novel. Lahiri goes beyond the obvious ‘places’ and subtly punctuates the narration with three ‘In my head’ vignettes. Being in one’s head is being in a specific place at a specific time. Memories and experiences rush in, and we try to make sense of them while dealing with our daily routines. The first vignette grapples with a definition of solitude - so apt in our pandemic times. Is solitude an emotion, a state of being, a trade, a condition? Can one be and feel alone even when surrounded by people? The second vignette deals with an unnamed fear of the daily “unravelling of time”. Prosaic nouns - apple, coffee, necklace, cell phone, keys convey the everyday nature of this anxiety. The fatigue of living one’s daily life has become the anthem of this pandemic. The third vignette transports the narrator to her childhood. The metaphor of jumping across tree stumps with her childhood friends seems to be what we are all grappling with. Toggling between caution and hesitation, she contrasts her fear with their euphoria. Her nostalgia clears, and she recognises her yet unnamed tenacity. Perhaps this tenacity is what we need to cling onto in order to survive all that this pandemic brings us. - Pankhuri Agrawal (May 2021)

Fantastically concise and engaging overview of the 15 most commonly used spices in Indian kitchens. ‘The Flavour of Spice’ (2017) by food critic Marryam H. Reshii is a must have resource for anyone interested in the 15 most commonly used spices in Indian kitchens. It is the kind of book that you cannot wait to curl up, dive in and read. Marryam provides a fantastically concise and engaging overview of the ancient Arab trade routes, the spice wars, and the legacy of the Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and British colonists who brought these spices to our kitchens. She then literally hunts down each spice, travelling in person to the plantations where they are grown (Varuna Plantations, Coorg), factories where they are processed (the unassuming Sakthi factory, Erode) and the spice markets where they are traded (Gadodia Market, Chandni Chowk). You criss-cross India and some parts of the globe, as she vividly portrays the farmers, traders, chefs, and home-cooks she encounters on her journeys. What I love the most about her book is the personal memories and associations with the spice (for instance buying zeera golis for less than ten paise; or the sudden insight that dal-chini means - bark of a tree from China). It highlights how quietly interwoven spices are in our daily lives. Each chapter ends with three to five assorted recipes compiled from her kitchen, celebrity chefs, colleagues and friends that celebrate that particular spice as the hero of the dish. As one can see in the index of the book, the spices are grouped into three broad categories - the big four, the aromatics, and the seed spices. The grouping of the ‘big four’ - chili, cumin, turmeric and coriander perhaps shows a leaning towards recipes from North India, where “haldi, mirchi, dhaniya, jeera” form a culinary rhyme. One cannot imagine most dishes from East and South India without the inclusion of mustard as a heavy contender. But that is the beautiful thing about writing - we bring our childhoods, our ways of seeing and being in the world into everything that we write. Highly recommended!