For Kandivali-based director Nihar Desai, 29, food is more than just about nourishment or sustenance. It's about the hands that nurture and put food on our tables, our memories of taste, and stories that abound in the kitchen. So, when his paternal grandmother passed away in June, it was only natural that he and his parents would dig into her (and the family's) favourite recipes of monsoon, and cook through the grief. "I had been documenting my dadi's recipes of Gujarati food, but couldn't follow up. So, after she passed away, I felt like I had to do this. It was our way of dealing with her absence," shares Desai.

He decided to shoot the process so that he and his cousins had a memoir of the food they'd grown up eating. "A friend then suggested that I could also interview my mother, Jyoti Desai, about it," he adds. And so, somewhere between rolling patra leaves, doling out jaggery and poppy seeds laddus, and learning about Jyoti's childhood in Paldi village in Ahmedabad district, he ended up creating a seven-part documentary on Gujarati food, titled Aav re Varsaad.