Mango & Gnocchi Ep. 5: Masala Chai & Dosa for Breakfast with author Anjalina Chugani
This week, Roshni sat down with with Anjalina Chugani, a Barcelona based cook, educator, and cookbook author to discuss rasa, expanding our idea of community, and finding home as a diasporic family.
Welcome, friends! This week, Roshni had a chance to (literally!) sit around the table with Anjalina Chugani, a Barcelona based cook and author of Rasa: Sabores e historias de mi cocina India and Soul Spices. Anjalina shares her wisdom on building rasa-- flavor, texture, essence-- sometimes described as ‘the juice’ or sap. She also speaks to us of building community, locally and globally, how a dosa for breakfast can win her heart, and of course the power of curry leaves.
Enjoy the episode!
Anjalina Chugani considers herself to be a passionate and emotive cook, connecting strongly with her Indian roots. A citizen of the world, having lived in London, Bangalore, spending numerous summers in Manila, and now residing in Barcelona with her family. Growing up in an Indian family, it was easy to connect to her culture via her taste buds. Her recipes come from memories of tastes and aromas from her mother’s and grandmother’s kitchens.
Anjalina studied at Hofmann Culinary School for two years, and then decided to take a step forward into teaching Indian cuisine, organizing private events and working with restaurants, teaching them how to use spices and developing recipes for them. It was from her cooking classes that the idea for Soul Spices, her first cookbook, was born. Anjalina recently released her newest cookbook, Rasa: Sabores e historias de mi cocina India.
Anjalina offers courses, master classes in cooking, and Ayurveda consultations. You can find her at anjalinachugani.com or on Instagram @anjalinachugani.
You're listening to the Mango and Gnocchi Podcast. I'm Roshni.
Rebecca:
And I'm Rebecca. And we're asking the question, what is your grief craving? We are both nurses, grief experts and avid home cooks. We’re the founders of Marigolde, a grief wellness platform rooted in food, culture and rituals.
Roshni:
We created the Mango and Gnocchi Podcast to highlight the power of our collective food stories. Stories that nurture us, bring us joy, and take us out of our minds and into our hearts.
Roshni:
Hey everyone, welcome to the Mango and Gnocchi Podcast. I'm so excited today to have my incredible, creatively talented friend, Anjalina Chugani here with us, and she's going to share about her cookbook writing process, how she grew up between India and living in Barcelona. We have a lot of stories and a lot of delicious recipes. So welcome, Anjalina, hi!
Anjalina:
Thanks so much for having me, Roshni, it's lovely to be here.
Roshni:
I just realized that's your full name and I've been calling you Anjali since I met you.
Anjalina:
Anjali is actually my name, my birth name. So Anjalina is sort of like a more creative name, actually. So Anjali is my correct name.
Roshni:
Okay, that’s your Beyoncé name.
Anjalina:
(laughing) Yes. Yes, absolutely.
Roshni:
Well, thanks for making time for us. I'm so excited to chat with you. And I have your cookbook here. Would you just show a peek of your cover into the screen?
Anjalina:
Sure!
Roshni:
It's stunning. I mean, just look at that cover. I just want to jump into making the cookbook, it must be a labor of love, and encapsulating all parts of you, all your life experiences. I think especially for people from the South Asian diaspora, there's such little written material, compared to if you think about European literature, European cookbooks. And just our presence, in terms of written archives is so scant, even though we come historically from a culture with epics and wonderful cookbooks, literature, stories. I just want to start there.
Anjalina:
(laughing) A big place to start!
I mean, first of all, yes, you're right. It is an absolute labor of love. And when I hold it, it feels like I'm holding a child, funnily enough, because I tend to hold it as if you would hold a baby, which is quite odd sometimes, but it's just the way I feel when I have it on me. And as you said, I feel like more and more of us in the diaspora need to be recording things, be it written, be it recorded in our voices, and have things out there more and more.
Because, yes it is very scant and lacking in the world we are in today, which is moving so quickly. Articles are fading away so fast, and things are disappearing in a second, or rather in 15 seconds. It feels like we need things to be sustained for longer. I'm a big believer in books, and I think that no matter what anybody says, and what people may think, books will be there forever. We will continue to long for them, and need them, and need to have the literature actually printed and written and passed down from generation to generation.
One of my main focuses was because I have two children and I believe that they need to also be flying the flag and keep carrying it on for all of us. I mean, this is not just one culture. This is many cultures and many, many people who form so many pieces of the puzzle. So for me, that's a really important issue.
Roshni:
And people think there's only one chana masala recipe or one dosa recipe, right?
Anjalina:
Absolutely.
Roshni:
But there are billions of us, literally billions. So there are at least a million different versions of home cooking, home recipes. So I'm really glad that, you know, we get to read one of those and you wrote it.
Talk me through this idea of rasa, because your book, and when we talk, just when we're eating, you have a very sensual-sensory language around food, how you think about it. And for people who don't know about rasa, it's such an important concept of how we eat, how we live our lives, really. It's a whole philosophy I would say. It's a rasa lifestyle, right?
Anjalina:
It really is, absolutely.
Roshni:
So I would love for you to just start with what does rasa mean?
Anjalina:
So rasa, as you know, is a Sanskrit word, and it encompasses so many different meanings, because Sanskrit is so deep and so profound and not only focuses on what I'm referring to here, however, it also talks about music and culture in general.
It's about flavor, texture, essence.
“Juice” actually is one of its meanings, and we refer to it a lot in Ayurveda. And so for me, this is a word that just encompasses so many parts of our lifestyle, as you said. And for me, having this as the title meant so much because I want it to become a word that is used on a day to day basis in all vocabularies, in all languages across the board. And I'm not sure if I can break those barriers down and do that, but it's a start, and I think we all need to start somewhere, to introduce words that can be referred to globally in a larger perspective.
Roshni:
I'm thinking about this word, especially in the context of our physical body, and our emotional body, and our spiritual bodies coming together.
Since we talk about grief on our podcast a lot, one thing at least at Marigolde, and what Rebecca and I believe in; it's a physical experience, right? Like your sense of appetite, how you see color, how you remember, what you smell. All of that changes. And if we're thinking about rasa as the essence and as the juiciness of life in which we live and thrive, that I feel like that becomes our guiding North Star both to one day live in it fully, but also elements of how to build rasa as a way to navigate grief as well.
Anjalina:
Yes, Yes. I fully understand that. And I think that grief is such a huge part of our lives. Loss in any sense of the word is part, and it's a natural process, in the beginning and end. So we have to consider that rasa is not just in the life force that is behind the prana, that is what is in our food and the natural beings that exist and coexist within everything that is nature. But also, it comes with what we lose as well. And we lose part of us. We lose some of our essence, we lose some of that texture, we lose some of that vibrancy. And that comes with when we lose people, when we lose a part of our lives, when when we finished a part of our lives and we're beginning something else, everything ends, but then everything is regenerated also into something else. So I believe a lot in that process.
Roshni:
Oh, that's so beautiful. What experience in your life do you think brought you to this moment where you were reaching for that life force, or something that was part of your cultural upbringing to navigate in that moment?
Anjalina:
There are many instances, but I think one that comes to mind is when I left Bangalore to come to Barcelona, completely voluntarily, of course— I came for love. I met my husband in in Bangalore, actually, and then moved to Spain with him.
Having said that, it was a very difficult time in terms of the transition because I left behind something so dear to me, which was my earth, my essence, my being. Again, I tried to take as much as I could and bring it to Barcelona. However, there is grief in that process because you're leaving certain parts of you behind, the parts that you considered to be tied to your relationships and what you have created there.
So it ended up being a transition that was extremely difficult, that I had to grieve for some time. And it took me a couple of years actually, to come out of that. I was in mourning for a good amount of time. And with that, I did bring all those parts of me, well, as much as I could, to try to cultivate something new here. And as I said, everything gets regenerated. So it was planting new seeds and finding new ways to bring in those aspects of my life here. But it took time. It took a very long time.
Roshni:
Yeah, I can just imagine, like nothing really smells the same, you know?
Anjalina:
No, no it really doesn't.
Like it's our earth, and it's what earth will really generate to you. And it's what it brings about. The minute the rain touches it, it's a whole different feeling as well. It's connected to feelings also, in a very big way.
Roshni:
It reminds me, you know, the perfume scent, mitti?
Anjalina:
Yes!
Roshni:
It's literally like rain soaked earth that they distill into a scent.
Anjalina:
Soil, yes, yes.
Roshni:
I could just like cry thinking about it!
Anjalina:
Yeah. You're going to make me cry now!
Roshni:
But this sense of, this sense of bottling mitti or earth as a scent and you wear that, how that reacts on your own skin, I love that. Are there smells and textures of home that you've been able to recreate or that you long for in your new life? And how long have you lived here? You've lived here a long time, right?.
Anjalina:
I've lived here for 23 years.
Roshni:
Yeah, yeah, that’s a lifetime.
Anjalina:
It is a very big chunk of of a lifetime, yes. I'm very lucky to have lived here for so long. There are loads of smells and tastes that I have been able to recreate here because of my longing for that, and because of the fact that I felt so integrated into my life in India. I had to bring—I mean, we do this, right? This is something that we do. We need to be inclusive for ourselves in wherever we are. And I think that that's a very big part of any culture that anyone belongs to. And if you have people to share that with, that makes it easier and also makes you want to do it more. There is more of an incentive there. So obviously, the first point of contact for me was the food, and I needed to learn how to make my kitchen a kitchen that felt like home to me. And that was my first sort of venture into creating that.
Roshni:
I think the first time I came over for lunch with some friends, you had this whole dosa spread and, you made your own chaat masala, and raita and all the papad. It was so amazing. You know, it was such a treat for someone to feed you and cook like that for you. And I remember, the lunch I'm sure was like 3 hours long. But we talked about curry leaves for an hour, or, that's what it felt like. And how, your mom would send you dried curry leaves from the Philippines, or you would get it from India and dry it. And my mom does that. She just came to visit me and in her suitcase was this like, giant bag of dried curry leaves from her garden. And nothing tastes like the curry leaves that your family grew, right?
Anjalina:
Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah.
Roshni:
Not even supermarket bought.
Anjalina:
No, no.
Roshni:
So, talk to me about the power of curry leaves. Because there's so much to say.
Anjalina:
Yeah. I mean, I don't need to tell you much about it because obviously you totally understand what's behind that. It has like a strength in it, which is something that's sometimes it's hard to describe to people, because it's sort of like you had to be there in that situation. And even if you're not there, okay, you try to bring it to wherever you are, at that time and try to share it with other people.
And for me, curry leaves are just— they just symbolize my life in Bangalore because it's where I got introduced to them in a very big way. Or rather, I probably was introduced to them before, but I think there was a different kind of appreciation when I was living in Bangalore because I was more in touch and wanted to— I was more curious— and I wanted to know more about what people were doing in their food and in different kitchens that I would go. And I was very nosy when I used to go to friends’ houses and and just go into the kitchen, just barge in and, you know how it is in India. Kitchens are just places where you can just walk in, sniff around, see what's going on. There's always something on the stove.
Roshni:
Steal pickles.
Anjalina:
Yeah, exactly. There's always something on the pressure cooker buzzing away. And I just feel like it just formed part of the DNA, and I had to bring some of that DNA back with me and it stayed. It just stayed. And it has always stayed. And my love for it has grown, because I've learnt to use these ingredients in my own way, but also in authentic ways and learnt recipes from people who have used them for generations and generations.
So for me it's a story, it's a part of tradition, it's a part of ancestral cooking.
I mean, being able to pick curry leaves from the garden in friends houses, it just, is so enriching.
Roshni:
Yeah, I think it just instantly transports you when you, like when that sharp smell hits the hot ghee.
Anjalina:
Yeah. I always say I want to bottle that smell and make a perfume from it.
Roshni:
Oh yeah. Sign me up, I will wear it!
Anjalina:
I would wear a tadka or curry leaf essence perfume. I would do it. 100%.
Roshni:
We need to recreate that.
Anjalina:
Yes we will do it.
Roshni:
Tell me about your family. What was it like growing up in India? You said you grew up in Bangalore, but you've lived in a lot of places, right? You’ve journeyed. And this idea of, we're talking about how home for so many of us living in the diaspora is not so simple.
We're longing for the place maybe we were born and raised in, but don't live there anymore. But almost, we can't even imagine living there again for whatever reason. So I feel like, whenever you see, like a Desi person abroad, you're like, “you want to be my friend?”, you know?
We’re instantly, like, drawn to that energy because so many of us don't have these physical homes, but we're in between places. And it's sort of like grasping for a little, oh, here's a little chutney powder, here's a little something I made. And we have these little packets that we're sharing, trading, to keep that kind of memory and sense of home going.
Anjalina:
Yeah, I mean, I think that the question “where are you from” in today's day and age is such a complex one, and also I don't blame people for asking the question. However, I also need people to understand that it isn't that simple anymore. And you don't belong to just one place. No one really does. I always tell people, look, you have to understand that you're a combination of the places that you have traveled to and been in over your entire life and also where your ancestors are from.
I was born and brought up in London, and I was there till I was a teenager, and then we moved to Bangalore at that time. So for me, there's a lot of pieces in the puzzle that weren't there, that were missing, and I couldn't find them when I was growing up in London because I always felt that there was something missing from me. And it's only when I landed in Bangalore that I really was able to find those pieces and say, oh, there you go. Now I feel like a complete person.
I really did not feel complete until then, and I didn't feel like I belonged in the UK at all, even though I was known in my whole family for being “the English girl”. And you know, my whole family's from all over the place. And they would sort of not make fun of my accent, but, I would just be the one that they would sort of, you know, poke fun at a little bit because of my accent.
And, after living in Bangalore, I just feel like that really did give me my roots. It gave them back to me. It's like I didn't really have them fully until I got there. And I felt that quite deeply, actually. Quite, quite deeply. So much so that that's why I suffered that sort of grief when I came into Europe again and I came to Barcelona, I was uprooted, literally.
Roshni:
Yeah and you were so young during those transitions, right?
Anjalina:
Yeah. So it was all, and don't get me wrong, change is probably the best thing to happen to anyone in their lives. If it's possible for you to change your location and move and live in different places in the world, it's such an enriching experience. And travel will give you the best education that you can ever receive. So I'm really pleased that I have been able to do that, and I would love to continue doing that, to be honest. I think that is the only way you get to know who you are, and get to know about other people in a deeper sense.
Just like you said, you know, you find your tribe, you find your people everywhere. It doesn't need to just be necessarily in one place. You can grab on to people and find them and gravitate towards them. I mean, I only got to meet you after living here for 23 years. It's still possible to do that. And I love that because you can still find your own people and pick up on their energies and learn from them at any age and stage in your life. So I think that moving and being from different places and discovering new traditions and new backgrounds all the time, it's just so enriching. One must have an open mind at all times.
Roshni:
I want to pivot a little bit to this idea of how we learn the language of care and nurturing. And since your life revolves around food, and feeding, and cooking, and teaching people how to cook, I'm curious, how did you grow up? What were the lessons you grew up with around, mental health, emotional wellness? Because at least for me, it wasn't so explicit. Like, obviously we didn't have conversations like we do now. But I'm curious how your family navigated that, and also like how you are doing that with your own kids now.
Anjalina:
Yes, it's extremely different now to what it was then. And my parents, we’re talking about 1970s back then. The nurturing was extremely differently communicated. My parents always loved having people over, sharing their home with people. I can't remember a time when there wasn't someone living with us as a guest. We always had guests at home, and granted— we didn't have a very big house in the UK. It was quite small, but we managed, and my mum would always make it work. And for her, nurturing came from inviting people into her space and taking care of them, which meant cooking for them, which meant, looking after them, 24/7. It was like, she was just the designated carer for every single person that walked into our home, and she still is.
Roshni:
What a gift. Is she accepting guests now? (laughing)
Anjalina:
Yeah! She loves it! And she’s just one of those people who will just like, it's an open house. And I've learnt that from her that your door should always be open to everyone. And that's a beautiful way to nurture people, and to take care of people.
In terms of mental health, there was never that sort of conversation. We never spoke about it with our family. We never spoke about it with our cousins, who are the same age as us. At the time, it was just, I think, a generational thing where it wasn't something that there was a light on, you know? It wasn't something that we ever felt conscious of. We worked around it in different ways. We dealt with our own grief and our own suffering in other ways. It was just not a conversation to have at the table.
I don't blame anyone for that. I don't even hold my parents accountable for any of that. I think that it was just a time where there was no… I mean, till very recently it's been a stigma, you know. So I think that especially coming from an Indian community where that was not a conversation to be had, it just wasn't something that was welcomed in the room, and the other ways of doing it were better because there wasn't anything difficult about having to have people over to kind of soothe the atmosphere, if that's what was needed.
Whereas now, it's gone the whole other way. And now I'm constantly talking to my kids about mental health. And now we are constantly having those conversations about their well being and open conversations about how they feel. And that's very normal in today's society. In the climate that we're in today, those conversations need to be had. They need to be had with our, with our cousins, now, we are doing that now, even though we didn't do it when we were 12 or 13 years old. Now we're all coming to our fifties or past our fifties. And it's something that has become very natural for us to accept. And I think a lot of that has to do with the way people have suffered over the last three or four years. And, you know, this is going to go on for some time now, and we have to accept the fact that mental health comes first.
Roshni:
This book is all about comfort recipes, I think.
Anjalina:
Yeah.
Roshni:
I mean, I’m also an advanced cook, so.
Anjalina:
Yeah, you are, you are advanced, for sure.
Roshni:
But looking at it, it seems like it's something simple, it's fun, something people can whip up, you know, it's for a party, but it's also very grounding because you have a whole chapter on Ayurveda and eating with the seasons, and eating with the elements. So I love that. It's sort of inclusive of all kinds of tastes and textures, whatever you're feeling in that moment.
Anjalina:
Absolutely.
Roshni:
Our idea of comfort food is really quite different than this idea of “oh you're going to eat something cheesy, fried, you know, “bad for you”. I think that can be one way, but another way is really just those deep, soulful recipes that make you feel cared for, that maybe, your parents cooked, or that reminds you of someplace, someone. Or maybe it's like the first thing you learned to make. You know, I learned how to make eggs, like, an omelette. And yeah, as a four year old, learning how to make that, its so empowering. Are there two recipes you think that are sort of like the epitome of the comfort food you would make for either yourself or someone?
Anjalina:
I mean, as you said, the whole book for me is focused on comfort eating. And comfort eating has been given a negative connotation for many years.
Roshni:
Okay we can talk more about that!
Anjalina:
Yeah! We will get to it, and I sort of wanted to put it back up and say, hey, you know what, actually, if something makes you feel good and it's comforting, then that's a good thing, it's a positive thing.
Roshni:
It’s rasa!
Anjalina:
So let's do things that are bringing people back to their essence, and back to feeling like more of themselves. And for me, that's what my focus was on, apart from the fact that it was a journey across my life. But I really have focused on foods that have given me the joy and have given me that feeling of belonging, and love, and spirit, and comfort, and health, and all of those things. And so I would say that in each chapter there's at least one thing I can extract from it that is like that. Something that is my ultimate, ultimate comfort food.
If you go to the chapter that's Bangalore, a dosa for breakfast, you can’t show me more love than that. If you're going to give me a dosa for breakfast, I mean, hands down, I'm in love with you, and I will be the happiest bunny all day long.
You know something as simple as in the Ayurveda chapter, we have a few different concepts, but there are recipes that you know, are so, so simple. Just like a normal daal.
Roshni:
Yeah.
Anjalina:
You know, like a mung daal.
Roshni:
So elemental.
Anjalina:
Which has a rice, which is sort of a ghee rice and, and for me, ghee rice and daal and the raita. That is something I could eat 24/7, 365 days a year and not get tired of it.
Roshni:
I mean the beauty of it is you could eat that and be alive. (laughing)
Anjalina:
And you'd be well, and you would be well, right? You would be well, yeah.
Roshni:
That is kind of the beauty.
Anjalina:
Yeah. And these, these to me are wellness foods. These are wellness foods. This is food that makes you well. It really does.
Roshni:
Yeah. And it's not complicated in the sense of, you know— we're not big believers in green juices on this show!
Anjalina:
No.
Roshni:
I occasionally like one, and indulge in one.
Anjalina:
I can't. I can't. I'm sorry. I just can't do them. I can't, they don't sit well with me, but then that's just me.
Roshni:
But a dosa? Yes.
Anjalina:
Yes.
Roshni:
We can eat dosas all day long.
Anjalina:
Yes, we can. And we should! Yeah, so I mean, I feel like those are my go-to’s. And then, you know, something as basic as we were talking about earlier, a masala chai that I began making here when I first got married and it was awful. And I remember my husband telling me, “I don't think you should carry on doing this”, you know.
Roshni:
Oh, no! Let him make his own chai!
Anjalina:
No, but he said it in a joking way, and he would make fun of me. But that made me so determined to get it right, and learn how to do it the right way, and different ways. So I did. And finally, I mean, I have at least three or four versions of it in the book for different occasions and different moments of your time, and your day, and your month, and whatever season it is. And for me, that is just a great way also to communicate culture to people who may not be familiar with it because you're introducing them to flavors that are not too complex, and having a warm drink in your hands will always be comforting. So why not?
Roshni:
What what goes in your chai?
Anjalina:
Oh, it depends on the day!
Roshni:
Ok, on a bad day?
Anjalina:
You know what? If I'm having a really difficult day, then, and if I have fresh curry leaves, there will be fresh curry leaves.
Roshni:
Oh, interesting!
Anjalina:
Yes, always. And I'm telling you, that aroma! If you have some that your mum has gotten for you, put some fresh curry leaves as you're brewing your chai.
Roshni:
I’ve never done that.
Anjalina:
I promise you it will take you somewhere else.
Roshni:
I’m a saffron chai person.
Anjalina:
Yes, saffron is great. Saffron is great. It's also a very uplifting spice. And it's great for women's health as well. So I think that saffron is something that we're using a lot more now. And there are so many other ways, but of course, a basic chai just with a light tea and, and ginger, that can also just take me on a Sunday to my peace of mind and just completely wind me down for the rest of the day on a Sunday. And that's perfect.
Roshni
Yeah. You live in Barcelona, but your parents live in Bangalore and Philippines, right?
Anjalina:
Yes. Correct. That's correct.
Roshni:
And, parents who are aging, parents who are living so far away. I'm curious, how are you connecting? Your children are in their twenties. So all of you are in different kind of transitional stages in your life. You know, your kids are turning into these adults and independent lives. You're entering your, I don't know, hot years.
Anjalina:
I'm already there, babe. I'm already there. Yep.
Roshni:
Literally and figuratively.
Anjalina:
Sweating as we speak.
Roshni:
Oh, I meant hot as in like, energetically. But I’ll take
Anjalina:
Both!
Roshni:
Both, yeah, the menopausal, wise years. And you know, your parents are aging, and I'm sure they have their own challenges with that. And I'm wondering, how are you kind of caring for yourself in that, while your family kind of lives all over the world? How do you care for your parents, how do you care for yourself?
Anjalina:
That's a good question. for me, it's about balance. It's about making sure I can see them a couple of times a year if possible. I'm very lucky that my mother still travels. So she comes here to be with my daughters as well. So that's when we come together and we're able to have that time to bond. I go and visit my father at least once or twice a year because he doesn't travel anymore.
And I feel like this is the time now that I want to make them comfortable. I want to make them happy. I want them to be in their moment of joy. Because you know, when we're older, this is the time to actually really kick back and, and do the things that they really love to do without even having to think about making excuses for it, because there doesn't need to be any. So I’m very happy when I see them doing things that they really enjoy doing.
Roshni:
Oh, what do they like to do?
Anjalina:
Yeah. Well, I mean, my mum still loves socializing, she still loves hanging out with people, she loves cooking for other people still, and she does it joyously. It's something that, you know, she feels so happy. And I see it in her face, and as long as she has the ability to do that, you know, let her do that when she comes here. She loves to take over the kitchen and I'm very happy to give it to her. For a couple of months in a year, it's kind of like, wow, yes, please, please do that. Because she gets so much joy from cooking for her family and for friends. And, you know, doing those things makes her really happy.
And for my dad, I go there and I make sure he's comfortable and, you know, just that he's cared for and just give him love. I think right now it's just making sure that they feel loved, and needed, and just cared for and and are made to just be comfortable wherever they are. You know, having two older children now, it's sort of like I see that there's a connection that's quite strong there, where I can get these two aspects of my life and put them together. And it's sort of like they clicked so well because it's such a great communication. And I saw that now with my daughters and my dad in Bangalore and both sides of it got so much joy out of that.
Roshni:
Yeah, and you can kind of relax back, right? You’re not sort of saying “make sure you talk to your grandparents!”.
Anjalina:
No, no, no, I didn't need to do any of that. It just sort of fell into place. And my kids wanted to know about my dad and vice versa. There was this sort of, it was like a Q&A going on, and an exchange which was so lovely and so natural, I think that job sort of does itself, you know.
Roshni:
Again, we're talking about we don't have the same familial structures that we can depend on in the way that maybe our grandparents did.
Anjalina:
Correct.
Roshni:
And there is this like assuredness of, Oh, I don't have to solve dinner or childcare, or even grieving, because it would be done in community. And more and more because of how we live, everything feels so distant. And a lot of times, asking for help or even checking up on someone, it's a lot of labor.
Anjalina:
It is. And I have always managed to do things on my own. And coming to Barcelona was another wake up call. It was sort of like a transition back to my living in London when I was young, in the sense that when we were growing up in London, by the time I was six or seven years old, I was washing dishes and cleaning the house and things like that. You know, we didn't have that sort of help. But ten, fifteen years ago, I realized that this is a time now to bring people together and start asking for the help when I need it, and that's actually human nature to do so.
As you say, our ancestors, our grandparents, they were in communities where everybody was there for you, 24 hours a day. Whatever ceremony that you had to do, partake in, whatever rituals you would do within your culture, your society, it would be done as a community. We have to be able to build those communities wherever we are, and I feel very strongly about that.
So however big or small, you know, you have to have that little space that is yours with the people that you can count on, and that are there for you. And I've noticed that over the years I do that more and more, and I bring people into my community more and more, because I think that building community is the number one thing that we need to do. We are not islands. We have to have our circle of people. And that doesn't just mean that it needs to be a circle that's just from one specific community. It can be people from all walks of life, and all types of communities that can learn about your traditions and understand what you do for certain aspects of your life. But also, those communities can come together no matter where you are in the world as well. It's something that if you make it happen, it will. It will. It's just about you manifesting it first, and then implementing it, and it will work every single time.
And I noticed this even with something like last year, my uncle passed away. My mum's brother. And we were in the Philippines, and pretty much no one lives there anymore. My mum has a lot of siblings, but she only has a couple that live there in the Philippines. Everyone possible flew in to be there for the rituals, for the ceremonies, and people were in all parts of the world, from the States, to me being there from Spain, to someone who was living in Australia, Singapore, Colombo, I mean, everyone flew in for that. And it just showed me that having a community doesn't necessarily mean that they need to be physically there, geographically in that one place. People can come from all over. If they have the means to do so, they will do it because they're connected and there's something greater than the physical, geographical pull. It's something bigger than that, that brings people together. So that's, that's how I feel about, you know, community and how, how we need to build that.
Roshni:
As we're wrapping up, I want to dive back into the book. Can you share about what it was like to be there in India? Because you shot a lot of the book in India, going to your old haunts, and the smells, and some recipes you're recreating in your home, some recipes, you know, they're sort of like coming alive from a capsule, right? It's like a time capsule. You're just instantly there. What was that process like emotionally and physically to just smell, touch, but then also be creating something, that sort of captured in time?
Anjalina:
It was incredibly special. It was incredibly eye opening as well, because I think when you look at things in a different light, and you're seeing it from a different perspective, you take in things in a slightly different way. So it's more conscious, it's more present, you're more present, you're more in the moment. And I tried to live it very, very strongly and very intensely when I was there.
You know, I took the photographer with me. She came with me, and seeing it through her eyes as well was a very beautiful experience, too, because I was taking her to all these old haunts, but also discovering new things with her that I hadn't really done before, but I had maybe experienced in sort of a tiny, tiny little brief moment while I was living there. But I actually was so immersed in that point, in that moment, that it was like, wow, you know, this is more than three dimensional.
You know, It was sort of like everything felt so alive and felt so, there was so much meaning to it because I knew that I was doing it for a cause. And the cause was not just having pictures for the book. The cause was opening people's eyes to something and taking them somewhere. So I wanted them also to have that immersive experience. So I honestly feel that when people see these pictures and they haven't been to India, I honestly feel that they will feel like they're there with me in that moment, because that was the intention. And that's how it happened. It really did just happen so organically and the interaction with people, and the way they were so willing to even be in front of the camera for us, and want to be in pictures with us. It was just such a wholesome experience that I remembered again how beautiful the country was, because that's just how people are.
Roshni:
Yeah, and I think it's so refreshing to see your book from the perspective of someone who's lived there and whose culture it is. It's again, what's in the media about India is complicated I think.
Anjalina:
Yes. Yes, it is. Definitely. And we can't be depending on media to communicate those things to us because.
Roshni:
Our gaze is so different, right? On what you see?
Anjalina:
Yeah. It's really, it's about telling people, hey, you know, go there, and understand what people are like. It's about the people at the end of the day, it's really about who you interact with on a on a singular level.
Roshni:
There’s so much generosity, yeah.
Anjalina:
There really is. And I was so happy that, you know, Becky, the photographer was with me. Her sister came along with us as well. And they had such a pleasant, beautiful experience. When they came back, they were like, we need to go back there again. This is just the beginning. We want to discover so much. And of course, it's the beginning, because you can never really finish your journey within that country. It just is too vast.
Roshni:
And many lifetimes, right?
Anjalina:
Yeah. And my only hope is that I can keep doing that and keep bringing people there through these different types of means. But my point is that I just want people to be able to go there and experience it for themselves.
Roshni:
It's a life changing experience.
Anjalina:
You know that. Yes, you know that better than anyone.
Roshni:
Yeah. Well, last question, this has been so much fun, is what do you suggest for someone– the simplest, simplest, simplest thing, they can do with this idea of rasa, when it's feeling like life and their grief journey, it just feels incredibly overwhelming, like it's taken over. And for a lot of us, during the holidays, or during big transitions it can feel like that. So are there practices, or recipes that someone can— it could be the easiest little thing that they could do.
Anjalina:
Yes, I do appreciate that holidays, especially big events, are very difficult moments for many, many, many people. And especially right now, in the world we're living in at this particular moment today. But I always tell people, please take care of yourself first if you can. If that is possible for you, you need to really hold yourself true and dear to yourself because that's all you've got.
There are a number of things that I involved in this book, and one of them are playlists. With each chapter, you have a little code to go to and you get a playlist. And the playlist from the Ayurveda chapter is very— it transports you, and it's a very peace giving playlist. If you put it on at any time of the day, you will get something from it. And for me, music says a lot and it can give you so much, which is why I included it in the book. It was a very key aspect of this book for me.
So put on a playlist. If you have the means to do so, make yourself a cup of chai, if you can do that. I understand that all these things require certain elements that not everybody may have access to, but if you can try to get some access to it somehow…
Roshni:
I mean, just ginger tea.
Anjalina:
Just throw in a piece of ginger into your tea. It's about eating with your hands if possible. Try and bring that element into your life because that will give you much more substance to what it is that you are consuming, because you're in touch with yourself then.
Roshni:
Well. I have no more questions, after that. (laughing) But that is so beautiful, eating with your hands, just connects you, so deeply to yourself. And that gesture of feeding yourself, right, there is no replacement.
Anjalina:
No, absolutely none.
Roshni:
Well, it's been such a joy to have you, and congratulations.
Anjalina: Thank you, thank you so much.
Roshni:
It’s so beautiful. So happy for you, to celebrate your book.
Anjalina:
Thank you for having me. Thank you for allowing me to talk about it.
Roshni:
Yeah. Yeah, we look forward to, more books, more trips.
Anjalina:
Yes, yes, yes. This is just the beginning.
Roshni:
And more lunches at your house.
Anjalina:
Yes. Very soon.
Roshni:
All right. Thank you, Anjali.
Anjalina:
Thank you so much.
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