For the Love of Food

Anumitra Ghosh Dastidar is a professional chef and co-founder of Edible Archives, a restaurant and art/research project based in Anjuna, Goa, that works with indigenous ingredients. It was one of the Infra Projects at the Kochi Muziris Biennale 2018-19, where she showcased 30 varieties of indigenous rice. With over a dozen years of experience in the food and beverage industry, Anumitra has worked in Japanese, Thai and Italian restaurants in Southeast Asia and South Africa, as well as in India.

She was the owner and chef of Big Bongg Theory, a modern Bengali restaurant in New Delhi and ran Bento Bong, an annual Bengali food stall, for three years. She presented dinners for the India International Centre’s annual Arts Festival in 2017 and 2019, and the opening lunch for Market Place 2018, an event bringing together organic farmers, chefs and restaurateurs from all over the world to exchange ideas on how to bring indigenous ingredients to the marketplace. In early 2018, she curated ‘Smoked, Steamed and Tempered’, an event showcasing the ingredients and cooking techniques of Northeast India for the University of Chicago’s Alumni Centre in New Delhi. Most recently, she worked with the Diva group of fine dining restaurants in New Delhi. Anumitra holds a PhD in Cognitive Linguistics from the University of Delhi.

Srishtaa Aparna Pallavi is an indigenous food researcher. Between the years 2016 and 2018 Srishtaa, formerly known as Aparna Pallavi, travelled through 11 states in India, without any funding and relying on the generosity of people she met, meeting with indigenous communities and learning about the food culture surrounding Mahua, a flower which was once a very important staple food for the indigenous and close to nature rural poor, but is now mostly known as raw material for liquor and highly vilified at that.

Before this Srishtaa had a 20-year long career as an environment journalist, working full time for the highly recognised Down To Earth magazine. During these years she wrote extensively on indigenous food cultures and discovered many lost and forgotten foods during her travels into the depths of India’s indigenous regions. Her writings have been featured extensively in the first two books in the First Food series published by the Centre for Science and Environment. She is currently working on two books – on Mahua – the lost food, and another on her personal food journey and how being a woman has impacted her relationship with food.

Suresh Jayaram (born 1965), is an artist, art historian, arts administrator, and curator from Bangalore. He is the Founder, Director of Visual Art Collective/1.Shanthiroad Studio an international artist’s residency and alternative art space in Bangalore, India. He is currently involved in art practice, urban mapping, archiving, curation, and arts education. His keen interest in environmental and urban developmental issues influences his work.

He taught art history at Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, the College of Fine Arts in Bangalore, and later went on to become the Principal between 2005-2007. He obtained his Bachelor’s Degree in painting from the College of Fine Arts, Karnataka Chitrakala Parishat, and a Master of Fine Arts from M.S.University, Baroda in 1992 in Art Criticism.

He has curated several projects – a collaborative residency with Theertha International Artist collective and 1Shanthiroad Studio gallery; the Colombo Biennale – Becoming – with Roman Berka, an Austrian curator; and Perspectives of Karnataka Modern Art at NGMA, Bangalore. He has authored the book Whatever He Touched He Adorned- GH Krumbiegal on the life and work of a German landscapist and horticulturist who lived in Bangalore. He has also authored a book on the botanical history of Lalbagh – Bangalore’s Lalbagh: a Chronicle of the Garden and the City.

He has published in various art journals, such as MARG, Art Indian, and Nandan, and has been a frequent writer on visual art and culture for the Times of India, Bangalore and the Bangalore Times for the past 30 years.