Sumaiya Mustafa is a firm believer that every hometown is where stories begin, where memories stay afresh, roots are stronger, and the sense of belonging is much deeper.
The manifestation of this unconditional love for her native place, Kayalpattinam a coastal town in Thoothukudi is an Instagram page called readingtv through which the blogger chronicles the local cuisine, culture, and personal anecdotes.
The credit, Sumaiya says, goes to her grandmother who's a decade older than independent India from whom she imbibed the art of storytelling, and counts on it to keep the legacy alive.
"I grew up listening to real stories, mostly about the world grandma grew up in. She has seen multitudes of the same piece of land. Even today, to hear her narrate the same story for the 100th time feels new," recounts Sumaiya, who holds a Master's degree in Computer Science and Engineering.
While she started her career as an assistant professor, she is currently a full-time blogger.
Uncovering diversity
Sumaiya's decision to stay in her hometown wasn't a conscious one, as she always aspired to move to urban locations in search of better opportunities.
"I love my close-knit family neighbourhood. It's a blessing and a normal thing here to catch up with your third or fourth cousins every day. Though many families in the town live elsewhere, building a Kayalpattinam diaspora world over, people here are very connected to their roots," shares Sumaiya, noting that Kayalpattinam looks far more globalised than some tier-2 cities.
"There is only one factor that guards this rootedness endogamy that is marrying over and over again within the same tribe. It is so because both the partners in any family in Kayalpattinam share the same homeland, therefore that sense of collective belonging is stronger. However this has been changing a lot in recent days with more people marrying others from a different town, like me," he added.
A scroll down Sumaiya's Instagram page promises to offer a refreshing perspective of this medieval-era port town. "Like in the tendency of ports of those times to exhibit strong cosmopolitanism and also be deeply local, our culture in the town is a total of that syncretism," notes Sumaiya.
"This has always kept our food, lifestyle, and heritage so different from the rest of Tamil Nadu. It was only in my late teens that I started to realise that friends from school and college that lived only a few km away from Kayalpattinam see our lifestyle and customs in a puzzling way. This took me to the journey of understanding the food and roots of my town through reading and research," he adds.
Closer to roots
What started as a humble effort to tell the stories about her people, brought her in touch with with a network of interesting people working on cool subjects. "I am always fanatical about urban histories and the making of our Indian cities. This further diversified my reading interests. What's an Indian city without visible and concrete colonial legacies called buildings? I do enjoy reading and understanding the various architectural styles that evolved during different epochs and circumstances," she beams.
"My biggest niche of interest is the Indian Ocean trade history. That's where my interest sprang into many things. Our history of Kayalpattinam is so connected to this and I am very privileged to have been able to be part of a network of academics, enthusiasts like me, journalists, and archivists that work on this space," she adds.
Sumaiya's topics for blogging often revolve around the mundane things of her town that fall in plain sight otherwise, books around the Indian Ocean's trade history and people met during her travel - oftentimes the ones that do menial and hard jobs.
"I didn't begin blogging with a purpose or believe it was socially relevant. I started writing because I wanted to chronicle a way of life that's not mainstream in Tamil Nadu. I wanted to tell people that communities like ours exist where idli, dosa, sambar, and vada aren't part of the cuisine," he adds.
I wanted to tell you that Tamil-speaking Muslims aren't non-existent. I wanted to tell how our roots are more tied to this land through the sea. I wanted to tell you that we have nothing to do with the Muslim dynasties of the northern part of the subcontinent.
But there is a reason that fuels my purpose today. Narratives that work towards the erasure of true history sometimes threaten the mosaic of myriad cultures called India are overpowering.
"It's high time we celebrate microcultures that don't fit into the mainstream. It is this pluralism that adorns the beautiful landscape of the subcontinent. This is something I have come to be more conscious about now. I don't know if my write-ups have changed the perspective of one person at least. My idea is not to convince people of anything. I do this to exhibit stories and realities that are otherwise not seen," she affirms.
The overwhelming support from followers has been an accreditation to the authenticity of her work. She was recently recognised as an emerging leader in cultural reconciliation by the Young People for Politics Champions Award 2022.
"It has upped my ante manifolds. I do feel like I should become more socially responsible than ever before and do a job for a peaceful sleep. There are so many things that visuals can't tell but words. An intangible heritage can better be told through words. This will remain a page like this while I'll keep writing on various other digital platforms as a freelancer," she sums up.
Ingredients
Moong dal: 100 g
Shallots: 10
Raw mango: 1
Tomatoes: 5
Eggplant: 1
Adai oorgai (preserved lemons)
Green chillies: 5-8
Dried Maldives fish/maasi (optional)
Method
Roast the dal until it turns aromatic. Please don't let it turn dark or let the colour change.
Boil dal, shallots, green chillies, raw mango, turmeric powder and eggplant together until they turn extremely mushy.
You can pressure cook them too.
Add some pandan leaves for aroma and remove it later.
Add some salt and let the excess water drain to retain a thick consistency.
It's best when eaten with ghee rice cooked in pandan leaves and coconut milk.
Local diaries
Tales of inheritance
My ancestral home was built in a vernacular style of Kayalpattinam in the early 1950s, at the time of my grandma's and grandaunt's wedding. It does have features of art deco. The house you see here is a twin house with a common wall as a partition and also a doorway in that wall to easily move from one house
to another. Husbands live with the wife's kinship. So, it's women who inherit ancestral houses in Kayalpattinam.
Timeless architecture
Old mosques resembling temple architecture stand testimony to our roots in a place with no influence from North Indian Muslim dynasties. Ours predates their arrival to the subcontinent. The initial masjids all looked a lot like temples because that's how the local artisans could build a place of worship back in the day. Ours had always been a peaceful, amicable bond with the rulers of the land through the waters of trade the Indian Ocean.
Rooting for regional cuisine
Some of our delicacies are vengaya paniyam, sothu vaada, Watlappam (it's made during Eid very passionately in Tamil-Muslim households, thanks to our Sri Lankan connections through Indian Ocean trade), and egg appams and seeni sambol (Sri Lankan in nature but also inherently part of our cuisine).
Recognition
Sumaiya was recognised as an emerging leader in cultural reconciliation by the Young People for Politics Champions Award 2022.