English

In the distant mirage noir of a dream, I see Grandma trading family recipes and secret ingredients with the profound blue evermore. The specific marination of crabs—vinegar, mustard oil, turmeric, garlic, red chillies, and that strange Aegean murmur of long-ago brine. A revelation of lobsters—deshelled, unfanged—... — Siddharth Dasgupta

She sat there a little perplexed, wrapped in red and gold, a bride since yesterday. Her smile, gummy and a bit yellow, reached her eyes and her nose crinkled slightly if she held it for long. I hovered nearby. I was the keeper of gifts, observant and meticulous for someone who had just hit her teens... — Barnali Ray Shukla

Bengalis cannot imagine life without digestive problems. The practices of their everyday life includes detailed descriptions about ambol, gaa goolono, delicate stomach, and of course gastric. Gastric, as far as Bengalis are concerned, is an organ in the body, next to the stomach, connected to the gut, attached to the gall bladder, liver and esophagus, and causes everything from bile to vile... — Sangeeta Ray

There are my scientific reasons for this – one being that a lot of the body’s serotonin is produced by gut bacteria. When there is an imbalance in the stomach, there is an imbalance in how the human mind works, how your heart feels. When the fight between the good and the bad fails in your gut, the rest of your body suffers... — Arathi Devandran

Brinjal half-sliced + stuffed with onion + tomato + authentic masala, slow cooked with peanut powder + jaggery, garnished with coriander... — Poornima Laxmeshwar

Inching through ridge and rind, your knife breaches this fortress of hardiness, green hide giving way to pods of gold. What beguiles you