Eat, pray, love

Our grandmothersrsquo handwritten cookbooks told innumerable storiesmdashtheir meticulous notes reflected an earnestness to learn and the bunch of magazine clippings of unfamiliar recipes shined light on their dedication to absorb every piece of information that came their way How much of this rigour translated in the food that was prepared in the kitchen one cannot be sure But this selfcurated collection of howtomake cutlets cakes chole and chaat offered a rare window into their lives and how food dominated itPunebased artist writer and facilitator Sheena Maria Piedade found one such gem when she was given the ldquounenviable jobrdquo of going through her grandmother Bertha Sequeirarsquos possessions after she passed away in 2018While sorting through a pile of old books and newspapers she found her prayer bookmdasha notebook that Sequeira used to copy verses from the Bible into during her daily readings Or thatrsquos what Sheena thought ldquoScribbled next to the prayers were recipes noted down from cooking shows and copied out from books Most were untitled or incomplete The back of the prayer book was stuffed with clippings of recipes cut out from newspapers and magazinesrdquo remembers SheenaSpirit Spice is a cookbook zine handmade with materials found from Bertha Sequeirarsquos prayer book which contains over 15 recipes that Bertha had sourced from magazines newspapers and calendarsThe chance discovery came as a surprise ldquoI had not really looked through my grandmotherrsquos prayer books despite living with her for most of my life This was not just a devout Catholic grandmother but a person with her own identity and very real interests tastes and desires She was pious but this double use for the book seemed normal to her I found that humorousrdquo she says in an email interview adding that it made ldquoperfect sense for her to use the book that was always accessible to hurriedly note down recipes from cooking shows or from friends on the phone Many of the recipes are actually just ingredient lists or instructions with no title She read the paper every morning and loved to collect things so her notebooks became a kind of repository for what she found compellingrdquoSheenarsquos grandmother grew up in Margao Goa moving to Bombay in the early 1940s with her family as a teenager so that she and her siblings could further their education ldquoShe lived in a chawl in Dabul Chira Bazaar then in Doha Qatar for nearly two decades before moving to Pune when my grandfather retired She was a schoolteacher for most of her life and very involved in the church as well as community and charity workrdquo she recalls Sequeira also loved to cook and feed people and create handmade things ldquoThese are definitely qualities I have inherited from herrdquo confesses Sheena who is the editor of LOVER an online arts and lifestyle magazine she founded in 2016Sheena shares how her grandmother learned to send emails more than two decades ago because her children moved abroad ldquoBeing separated from her when I was a teen Sheena briefly lived with her mother she often sent me her recipes by email I was fascinated that my family cookbook was not in fact a book but email inboxes which is a big departure from what people like to believe about Indian grandmothers and the legacies they leave behindrdquo she says adding ldquoMy projects respond to the fantastical stereotypes in Indian food writing about watching our grandmothers cook with love Sure thatrsquos true for some but many of us have learned to cook in other waysmdashguess what so did our grandmothersrdquoSheenarsquos latest work Spirit Spice is a cookbook zine handmade with materials found from her grandmotherrsquos prayer book and contains over 15 recipes that Sequeira had sourced from magazines calendars and newspapers Magazine clippings are juxtaposed with handwritten prayers and Biblical teachingsmdasheasy chocolate fudge resting below a verse on ldquoChrist is the anointing onerdquo and a mango souffle dish sharing room with a Gospel of MatthewSheena was working on another cookbook project when the idea for creating this zine came to her The catalyst she says was being accepted into a FICA Foundation for Indian Contemporary Art workshop on zinemaking that explored the intersections between acts of reading and concepts of care ldquoRenuka Rajiv the artist who was leading the workshop taught us how to lay out number and piece together pages of a zine without digital intervention It was in this brief that I suddenly remembered the prayer book and returned to it at first because I wanted to use material that did not need any technology At that point I hadnrsquot yet delved deeply into the contents so the zine took form organically and iteratively I created the zine over 24 hours on the floor of my living room simply by remixing the prayer bookrsquos content I loved bothmdashthe restriction of time and the limitation of materialsmdashalthough the latter was a choice I made myselfrdquoThe zine was exhibited at the FICA booth at India Art Fair earlier this year Among the more fascinating pages in the zine and which Sheena has replicated as is from the original prayer book is a page dedicated to natural home remedies Therersquos carrot and apple for constipation gingergarlic for cold pineapple for arthritis and bananas for stress ldquoI love the contrast of these natural remedies against the recipes for cakes and desserts in the zine I am certain that many articles were kept as gestures of care My grandmother did not drink cocktails but may have cut them out for me the word lsquoSpiritrsquo comes from the title of that article but indicates Sequeirarsquos spiritual beliefs The benefits of manuka honey were cut out because most of her children have immigrated to New Zealand where this is found She kept a recipe for tricolor pulao and we donrsquot generally associate patriotism with the average Goan aunty I enjoyed these discoveries and noticing assertions of her identity and investments in relationshipsrdquo she saysAs an artist and photographer who works very closely with material memory Sheena feels therersquos so much potential in these cookbooks not just culturally to preserve the recipes themselves but to become curious about where we come from by reading between the lines ldquoZines archives websites books popups restaurantsmdashthere are endless possibilities to treasure and continue to pass on these legacies especially when they indicate the full personhood of the people who created themrdquoTo download the zine thisislovercomfoundspiritspicedigital