Last week on a bright and obliging Saturday afternoon, a small group of us gathered at Triveni Kala Sangam, tucked into the gentle, familiar folds of central Delhi. Not for our usual ritual of milky tea from the Triveni café, held carefully in paper cups and sipped on the amphitheatre steps, but for something far more intimate. This time, we came to listen.
The workshop was organised as part of the Young Collectors Programme by India Art Fair, but it felt less like an art event and more like an afternoon suspended outside time. Shruti Taneja of Nivaala, a boutique publishing house with a deep affection for stories and memory, invited me to co-curate the workshop with her, alongside Delhi based illustrator Aaryama Somayaji. There was no performance, no display, no pressure to produce anything polished. What unfolded over those hours was deceptively simple, and moving. Through a nostalgia driven menu curated with Nivaala, participants were asked to do just one thing. Call home. Ask for a recipe. Write it down.
At some point early on, Shruti shared the origin of Kitchen Calls, and the room grew still. “I lost most of my mother’s recipes when she passed away,” she said. “I remember the taste of her food. The smell that once filled our home. The comfort of eating it. But not how to make it.”
Kitchen Calls, she explained, grew out of hearing people say, almost casually, “I should really write down my grandmother’s recipe someday.” And someday, as we know too well, rarely arrives. So what if someday became right now. What if thirty people sat together and documented recipes live, leaving no room for postponement or regret.
For the workshop, I brought on board a much loved Delhi restaurant known for honouring nostalgia and the cuisine of Punjab. Together with their chefs, we created a menu that reached into the past. Dishes that appear simple on the surface, yet sit at the very core of our memories. Besan laddoo that tasted like Diwali. Saag with makke ki roti that smelled faintly of winter sun. Namak ajwain paratha with gajar gobhi achaar. Kaali gajar ki kanji, sharp and alive. Food designed not to impress, but to stir something.
As the afternoon unfolded, the teentaal from a Kathak class somewhere above us began to rise and fall. The soft chiming of ghungroos worn by little girls drifted through the corridors of Triveni, unplanned and utterly perfect. With every rhythmic beat, memories seemed to sharpen. Voices softened. Strangers smiled at one another with a kind of recognition that needed no explanation. Stories began to spill.
At one table sat two sisters, perhaps in their late forties. They spoke of a recipe book their mother had made for them before their weddings. One of them had brought it along that day, wrapped carefully in cloth. A small scrapbook, its pages yellowed and softened by time. Their mother’s handwriting, still careful.
One participant, Parvinder Marwaha, a British Sikh visiting from London, articulated what many in the room were feeling but had not yet put into words. She spoke of how meaningful it was to attend something so rooted while she was in India. What moved her most was the simplicity of the idea. In just two hours, with a single sheet of paper and a room full of curious, intentional people, shared memories quietly began to take shape.
The food stirred those memories too. Kaali gajar ki kanji was a first for her and an instant favourite. Saag, eaten with gud, surprised her. It reminded her of how her father always ends his meals with a little jaggery, a ritual she grew up watching in the UK, never quite questioning, only absorbing.
By the time the afternoon drew to a close, it felt as though something delicate had been preserved. Not just recipes, but voices. The way someone explains a dish over the phone. The pauses while they think. The laughter when they remember something too late. In writing these recipes down, we were not simply documenting food. We were holding on to people. And perhaps, in doing so, reminding ourselves that memory does not live only in the past. Sometimes, it waits patiently for us to sit down, listen, and write.