LFC BENGALURU | DECEMBER 2025
I am an ecologist by training. I study rainforest trees for a living. But the first place I learned to observe systems closely—how things grow, last, and connect—was my kitchen.
In my family, cooking has always been a collective activity. My grandparents experimented freely, my parents cooked instinctively, and meals were had where everyone gathered. The kitchen particularly became our anchor during the pandemic years. No matter what was unfolding outside in the world, we returned to chopping, cleaning, tasting, and sitting down together. A meal was how we took stock of the day.
My grandmother shaped how I think about ingredients more than anyone else. She never taught me recipes in a conventional way. Instead, she taught me how to look. At vegetables, at seasons, at what lasts and why. We are from the Western Ghats, where monsoons stretch on for months. She would talk about gourds grown in summer that stayed fresh well into winter, even after Dussehra and Diwali. Nothing was wasted—the skin, the seeds, the flesh all found some use. She made me realise that no ingredient is ‘boring’ by default; we just haven’t listened to it long enough.
That instinct—to stay curious about what’s on someone else’s plate—is what drew me to the Local Food Club in Bengaluru. I joined a little late, missed my first meetup, and before I knew it, found myself co-hosting a gathering. When I finally hosted my own LFC, I wanted it to feel intimate, unrushed, and slightly different.
It was a rainy Bengaluru day. With Ganesh Chaturthi, Onam, and Eid all colliding in the same week, we knew it would be a small gathering. We met upstairs at Freedom Tree, a beautiful space that felt like a glasshouse balcony—plants everywhere, tables tucked into green corners, the staff kind and unhurried. When it was time to start, there were only four LFC members; it soon felt less like a meetup and more like old friends finding each other after a while.
The main activity of the meetup came together almost serendipitously. To facilitate it, to do any sort of writing, we need stationery, but I had worried if large chart papers would be wasteful, only to be folded up and forgotten. I kept thinking about what people would take back with them. I’ve been writing letters since I was a child—first postcards, then inland letters when postcards felt too exposed to prying eyes. Folding those blue sheets, slipping photos inside, worrying about the postman reading my secrets was all part of its charm. Even now, my closest friend and I still write to each other from our travels.
So, instead of chart paper, I brought postcards—and asked everyone to spend time with a single ingredient of their choice, drawing it, writing about it, and letting it lead the conversation.
Each of us chose an ingredient—sometimes something we had brought, or something we simply felt close to. We spent about 20 minutes drawing, colouring, Googling references when imagination fell short, and talking our way through these ingredients. One of us drew kokum in its many forms: fresh, dried, soaked. That drawing opened up conversations about rasams, sol kadhi, and chutneys made only during certain rituals, and foods reserved for times of grief or in remembrance of someone who passed. Another ingredient led us into stories of home kitchens, niche preparations, things made only in specific households.
On one side of the postcard was the drawing. On the other, a short message that read a lot like 'Hi friend. This is my ingredient. This is why I love it. This is how you can cook with it.'
We didn’t get to choose which card we kept. Instead, we shuffled them and picked at random. Not knowing felt important; you don’t always get to decide which story stays with you.
What surprised me was how quickly the postcards unlocked memories. Someone spoke about the last time they wrote a letter—as a child, to their grandparents, describing school holidays. Another shared how her ageing father now writes letters to his granddaughter, piecing together memories as he goes. Suddenly, the table wasn’t just about ingredients anymore. It was about time, distance, what we try to preserve, and how we pass it on.
Eventually the postcards felt like small diary entries that were exchanged. Not something to be archived and forgotten, but something you might pin up, use as a bookmark, or send to a friend.
I didn’t want the meetup to feel instructional or performative. With very few people, it only felt right to sit down together and let the conversation wander. The postcards became our way of anchoring the evening—of knowing each other through food, handwriting, and colour.
When we finally packed up, each of us carried someone else’s ingredient home—drawn by hand, explained in a few lines, exchanged by chance.