Table Talk with Varun Deshpande

Table Talk with Varun Deshpande
Date: 23 January, 2022
Time: 21:00 IST

In India, contrary to some western belief, most of us aren’t vegetarian. True, our per capita consumption of animal protein is nowhere near as much as in some more developed economies, but there are a lot of us, so we wind up eating a fair amount between us. I’m a meat eater too, but not one with an untroubled conscience. I’ve tried over the years to reduce my consumption of meat, eating it maybe once or twice a week, but I like it too much to quit entirely.

So, a few years ago, when I was with The Hindu, I was intrigued when my friend Lynn de Souza forwarded some material to me from the Good Food Institute, which had begun operations in India, and suggested I meet up with them. I did, and I have followed their work since. GFI is an international network of non-profits that works towards sustainable ways of giving us our protein, allying with scientists, foundations, governments, entrepreneurs, and corporations.

Our guest this Sunday is Varun Desphande, MD of GFI Asia. Varun has been deeply immersed in healthcare and technology from a very young age, studied chemical and biomedical engineering at Carnegie Mellon, and has worked on implementing digital health in India and the USA.

We will talk, as we usually do on Table Talk, about formative food memories, and from there we will go on to his journey to GFI and why he chose this work to focus on and more about what GFI does. Along the way, we will learn about the two main streams in this field, lab-gown meat and plant-based meat substitutes, and what the latest developments are. We will chat for a couple of hours, more if Varun and you folks are amenable. And, as ever, there will be plenty of time for audience questions.

Giving back

Table Talk is free to attend, but we ask our guests to name a charity or cause they support, and we ask those attending to make a donation to that cause, Varun has two choices, GFI itself — it is a non-profit, as I said above, and this is their donation page — and Fortify Health Foundation, which works on anaemia and neural tube defects in India, through flour fortification. You can find out how to donate via this page.

Attending

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(About Table Talk and past guests.)

Table Talk with Kurush Dalal

Table Talk with Kurush Dalal
Date: 9 January, 2022
Time: 21:00 IST

Kurush has been our guest before, so I won’t re-introduce him. We will chat this time about the same broad area: the intersections of food, cooking, archaeology, anthropology, culture, and also what he’s been doing since we chatted back in May.

We’ll chat for at least a couple of hours, including questions from and discussion with the audience, and may go on longer, if Kurush and you are willing.

Attending

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(About Table Talk and past guests.)

Table Talk with Anita Roy, Kishi Arora, Krish Ashok, Kriti Monga, Kurush Dalal, Ranjini Rao, Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal, Saba Mahjoor

Table Talk with with Anita Roy, Kishi Arora, Krish Ashok, Kriti Monga, Kurush Dalal, Ranjini Rao, Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal, Saba Mahjoor
Date: December 26, 2021
Time: 20:00 IST

Table Talk brings the year to an end with an informal chat with as many of our 2020 guests as could make it.

We’ll be looking back at the year and what we have learnt from it, with reference to food, but, as we have found through these past conversations, that can intersect with just about anything.

And of course we look forward to all of you joining us too.

We’ll chat for two to three hours, maybe more if you and our guests are willing.

Attending

You will need to go to the Zoom link and register with a valid email address, after which you will get the link to join the event.

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(About Table Talk and past guests)

Table Talk with Manu Chandra

Table Talk with Manu Chandra
Date: December 12, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

The various Olive brands, Toast & Tonic, Monkey Bar, The Fatty Bao, Cantan… You’d think I would have first encountered Manu through one of the many innovative, popular and critically acclaimed restaurants he has nurtured and/or created. But when he was making his mark, I was going through a particularly insolvent phase and then rebuilding from there, and fine dining was something that was, as my young friends say, out of my aukat. I first met him when I was editing ForbesLife India, and he wrote for us about the importance of sourcing local ingredients, and since then, his has been one of the voices on food that I’ve listened to carefully. At one point I somehow wound up on the guest list for the opening of The Fatty Bao in Bombay, and had the additional good fortune of having Manu sit with Antoine and I and informally explain some of the thinking behind his ideas.

The making of Chef Chandra started with an early interest in food and what went into making it and presenting it, and continued with formal study (like previous guest Kishi, he trained at the Culinary Institute of America, and their times there overlapped a bit), apprenticing in celebrated kitchens (Restaurant Daniel, Le Bernardin, Gramercy Tavern, Café Centro, Jean Georges), formative jobs (Mandarin Oriental,  Eyvind Hellstrom’s Bagatelle), prizes (a Sea Food Masters Award for the National Recipe Competition in the USA), before he returned to India, where he joined Olive Beach in Bangalore as Chef de Cuisine.

We will chat about this journey and his other formative influences, his work highlighting locally sourced ingredients, what it takes to be a chef, the challenges of running restaurants — multiple restaurants, each with distinct identities — the joys and sorrows of celebrity, The Social Kitchen, an initiative he is part of that wants to “bring families back to the kitchen or table to interact and talk using new kitchen design,” and what he’s been up to since he decided, a few months ago, to leap into the unknown. As ever, be prepared for digressions — these are conversations, not formal interviews — and you’re welcome to nudge us into them or back on topic.

We’ll chat for at least a couple of hours, including questions from and discussion with the audience, and may go on longer, if Manu and you are willing.

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause.

(I’ll add Manu’s choice here shortly.)

Attending

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(About Table Talk and past guests.)

Table Talk with Kishi Arora

Table Talk with Kishi Arora
Date: November 28, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

You would think having a pal who is a pastry chef — qualified from the Culinary Institute of America no less — would be a really useful thing, right? But for over a decade now, Kishi has been sending me photographs of cake for my birthday. Would you think someone with as angelic a face could be so cruel?

Seriously though, I’m a long-time fan of hers. I first met Kishi when she was among a group of TED India Fellows I knew, and as is the way of this world, most of our subsequent friendship has been over social media, with that combination of distance and affection that so many of us know. Kishi’s a highly qualified chef, as I said, who worked in the USA and Singapore before coming back to India, where she has been a consultant for brands like Mad Over Donuts and Nature’s Basket, and Godfrey Philips India. She is also an entrepreneur, with her company Foodaholics which currently has her own line of custom-made desserts and her mother’s home-cooked meals business, Mama K Treats.

We will talk about her culinary journey and influences, as we usually do at Table Talk, before we learn what the crucial differences are between being an accomplished home cook and being a chef planning and executing menus for a changing cast of consumers, and the even more different demands and learnings of being a culinary entrepreneur. As ever, be prepared for digressions — these are conversations, not formal interviews — and you’re welcome to nudge us into them or back on topic.

We’ll chat for at least a couple of hours, including questions from and discussion with the audience, and may go on longer (three hours has been fairly routine for Table Talk, and we’ve gone as long as five).

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause.

Kishi’s choice is Aid India, which works with marginalised communities, helping them become self-reliant by providing support for education, healthcare and shelter. You can donate to their work here.

Attending

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(About Table Talk and past guests.)

Table Talk with Vidya Balachander

Table Talk with Vidya Balachander
Date: November 14, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

I first encountered Vidya’s byline in this lovely piece on asafoetida (which won ASJA’s award for food and drink writing in 2021), and have followed her work since. She is an award-winning food writer, and currently editor of Whetstone’s South Asia vertical. Having lived in various parts of India, Sri Lanka, and now Dubai, and with her deep interest in the intersection of food and anthropology, she struck me as the perfect person to chat with and learn about how food wanders around the globe, changing and being changed by those who consume it.

We will also talk about her life and where she has lived it, the influences in her thinking about food, what good food writing is all about, and perhaps what an editor looks for in this kind of writing. Be prepared for digressions; as ̛I’ve said from the beginning, off-topic excursions on Table Talk are a feature, not a bug.

We’ll chat for at least a couple of hours, including questions from and discussion with the audience, and may go on longer (three hours has been fairly routine for Table Talk, and we’ve gone as long as five).

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause.

Vidya’s choice is The Banyan, which, she says, “does stellar work in rehabilitating and housing at risk, mentally ill women in Chennai (and across Tamil Nadu).” You can donate to The Banyan‘s work here.

Attending

You will need to go to the Zoom link and register with a valid email address, after which you will get the link to join the event.

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(About Table Talk and past guests.)

Table Talk with Sonia Jabbar

Table Talk with Sonia Jabbar
Date: October 31, 2021
Time: 20:00* IST

I knew Sonia via online networks and mutual friends over the years, and followed some of her work as an essayist, travel writer and photographer before I first met her at a party and gushed at her (I had just been blown away by an essay of hers that I had read in Elsewhere: Unusual Takes on India, a now out-of-print collection from the no-longer-among-the-living India Magazine) and she took several steps backwards, understandably alarmed. She did not, fortunately for me, block me from all social media after that, and I got to witness her metamorphosis into a plantation boss — when her mother passed away in 2011, Sonia took over the running of Nuxalbari Tea in north Bengal, which her family has owned since 1884, and she is the third generation of women who have run the estate— deeply involved not just with the growing of fine tea, but with the issues of the women who worked there and with conservation. In 2019, the Indian government recognised her work, giving her a Nari Shakti Puraskar.

We will talk about her various lives, about the nuances of tea, the elephants who pass through the estate and her work to give them safe passage, the reforestation efforts, and maybe some polo.

We’ll chat for a couple of hours, including questions from and discussion with the audience. We won’t go much beyond 10 p.m., because Sonia has to be up with the sun.

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause.

Sonia’s choice is Haathi Saathi Foundation, an organisation she founded, which works on creating awareness of conservation issues with children and other community outreach, creating elephant corridors, and reforestation. Aside from making a donation, you could also choose to volunteer to spend time at the plantation, planting trees, recording elephant movement, building environmental and conservation leadership among rural kids. More here.

Attending

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* Please note, we start an hour earlier than the usual time, at 8:00 p.m. IST.

Table Talk with Nandita Iyer

Table Talk with Nandita Iyer
Date: October 7, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

Nandita is a qualified medical doctor, giving a lazy headline writer an option for basic wordplay (sorry, not sorry). But she is best known as an early food blogger (she started her blog in 2006) who is now a columnist, author, YouTube star, and consultant.

We will talk about her journey as a writer, of course, and then we will spend some time chatting about food fads and trends and how to take the long view on them, and of course the subject of her last book, superfoods.

We’ll chat for a couple of hours, including questions from and discussion with the audience, and if Nandita, who is an early riser, is amenable, we may talk a little longer.

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Nandita’s choice is a campaign that is buying school uniforms for underprivileged children in the Whitefield area of Bangalore. We’re requesting folks in the audience to thank Nandita for her time with a donation to the campaign.

Attending

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Table Talk with Vikram Doctor

Table Talk with Vikram Doctor
Date: October 3, 2021
Time: 20:00* IST

You all know vikdoc, through his columns or his podcasts, or maybe, more recently, his Instagram (or perhaps, and I know this is unlikely, from his earlier appearance on Table Talk), the chap who finds fascinating connections that help us understand our world and where it came from.

This session was his idea, and when I say he does his homework, I do not say so lightly: Doc read all 96 volumes of Gandhi’s Collected Works, “finding references to Gandhi's interest in food all the way through.” We will chat about Gandhi’s dietary choices and how they shaped his life. For instance, when he first went to London, he was not a particularly political person, but his decision to stay vegetarian led him to explore the vegetarian movement in the UK, one that was part of a number of challenges to the British way of life, and began going to meetings of the local Vegetarian Society. And when he went to South Africa, he identified himself as a barrister and a member of the Vegetarian Society of the UK, whose aims he wanted to propagate there. There is more, of course, and I'm looking forward to it.

So, long story short, we'll chat for a couple of hours, including questions from and discussion with the audience, and if we can, we’ll persuade Doc to stay longer.

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Doc has chosen All Creatures Great and Small Sanctuary, which is a registered charitable trust. If you would like to say thank you for this session, and if you can afford to, please donate on their donation page, or via their campaign on Milaap.

Attending

You will need to go to the Zoom link and register with a valid email address, after which you will get the link to join the event.

To get notifications of new episodes and links to past episodes, please subscribe to:
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* If you've attended a Table Talk session before, please note the change in timing. This one will be at 8 p.m., not 9, since Sheru, the canine member of Doc's household, demands an early morning start to his day.

Table Talk with Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal

Table Talk with Rushina Munshaw-Ghildiyal
Date: 19 September, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

I've known Rushina from back when the term ‘social media’ wasn’t a thing and she and I were were part of a small community of early bloggers. Even then, she was carving out her space as a specialist, a food blogger, and in the years since, she has just grow’d and grow’d. In her words, “I describe myself as a Culinary Chronicler, but switch hats between being a teacher, a Corporate Food Consultant, and Curator of Food experiences.” She now runs her own consulting firm, A Perfect Bite, and APB Cook Studio, a food incubator lab, test kitchen and studio, and among other things, she authors Godrej’s annual Food Trends Report, runs conferences, and much more I hope to catch up on in our chat. And of course she continues to blog and is very active on Instagram, where I tease her about being an infuencer.

Our chat will be about her evolution from those blogging days and what she has learnt over the years about writing and making content about food, and in particular her work documenting this country's many cuisines, including her current project that focusses on spices, and much else. (If you have attended Table Talk sessions before, you know that tangents and digressions from the a̶l̶i̶b̶i̶ topic are a feature, not a bug.)

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend, and when I get down to uploading past episodes, free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Rushina’s pick is the Verushka Foundation, a small non-profit working to provide sustainable livelihood opportunities for young individuals with developmental disabilities by training them and placing them in the culinary space. If you would like to say thank you to Rushina for the session, please donate via Gpay or NEFT to
Account Name: Veruschka Foundation
Account Number: 013100101010946
IFSC Code: SRCB0000013
Name of Bank: The Saraswat Co-operative Bank Ltd.
Bank Branch: Marol

Attending

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More about Table talk here.

Table Talk with Anita Roy

Table Talk with Anita Roy
Date: 5 September, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

Anita is a writer and editor who has worked across genres. But the reason she is our guest for this edition is that she is also an environmentalist who lives her principles. And she bakes a mean loaf.

Our chat will be anchored in sourdough and what the simple act of making your own bread teaches you, but we’ll also talk about writing, especially for children and young adults, teaching, foraging, preserving for winter and future generations, and how these things converge in her life. And, erm, lots else. (If you have attended Table Talk sessions before, you know that tangents and digressions from the alibi topic are a feature, not a bug.)

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend, and when I get down to uploading past episodes, free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Anita’s pick is The Community Library Project, a movement I share her respect and love for. The nice part, she says, is anyone “can donate books as well as money, and anything that keeps dem stories circulating and not just gathering dust on some forgotten bookshelf has gotta be good.” If you would like to say thank you to Anita for the session, please go to the CLP’s donation page for details.

Attending

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More about Table talk here.

Table Talk with Ananya Kabir & Ari Gautier

Table Talk with Ananya Kabir and Ari Gautier
Date: 22 August, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

Ananya is an academic and researcher, and Ari is a writer and poet. Together, they founded and run Le thinnai Kreyol (on Facebook, YouTube, Medium, and Instagram), which has been discussing and showcasing various aspects of creole cultures

We’ll talk about creole cultures all over the world — and of course specifically in India — and the cuisines and foods that they have birthed, but we’re very likely to talk about lots else. (If you have attended Table Talk sessions before, you know that tangents and digressions from the alibi topic are a feature, not a bug.)

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Ananya and Ari have chosen Unicef’s Afghan appeal, “as I’m sure we all agree that there’s no one on this earth more needy of protection than vulnerable children.” If you would like to say thank you to Ananya and Ari for the session, please donate what you can at Unicef‘s campaign.

Attending

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Table Talk with Nilanjana Roy

Table Talk with Nilanjana Roy
Date: 8 August, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

Nilanjana is an author, critic, columnist, and editor. In A Matter of Taste (2004) an anthology of writing on food and its place in our lives, she collects some of the most significant Indian voices over the last century. She also did time in journalism and publishing, and for several years wrote the popular blog Kitabkhana. You can also follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Some two decades ago, she became one of my closest friends, and she and her partner and their cats have frequently been my home away from home in Delhi, where have I spent many happy hours in their bookshelves, pausing only to attempt to eat them out of said house and home or be taken out and fed.

We’ll talk about the intersection of books and food, yes, but being old buddies, we’re very likely to talk about lots else. (If you have attended Table Talk sessions before, you know that tangents and digressions from the alibi topic are a feature, not a bug.)

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Nilanjana has chosen  Goonj, especially for their work on Covid-19 relief. Many of you would have heard of Goonj as the organisation that collects used clothes, bed linen and the like, but they are so much more. If you would like to say thank you to Nilanjana for the session, please donate what you can at their donation page.

Attending

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Table Talk with Krish Ashok

 

Table Talk with Krish Ashok
Date: Jul 25, 2021
Time: 21:00 IST

I've known Ashok as a popular personality on Twitter, and as a musician, regularly putting out his compositions (he plays multiple instruments) for his followers. Along the way, I discovered he's also an artist, and last year we found out he is also an author (his book, Masala Lab, came out late last year, to popular acclaim). All this, mind you, while holding down a very demanding day job and cooking for his family.

We'll talk about these multiple facets of him, with an attempt every little while to stay on topic (I am easily sidetracked, and so, with Table Talk, I cannily call this a feature, not a bug) and chat about food and science and the book.  We'll chat for around a couple of hours, which includes time for questions from the audience.

You can buy Masala Lab here, and read Ashok's column at Mint here.

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Ashok has chosen Railway Children, a non-profit organisation under Section 8 of The Companies Act, which works to ‘create and enable sustainable changes in the lives of children living on the streets.’ If you would like to say thank you for this session, and if you can afford to, please donate at their donation page.

Attending

You will need to go to the Zoom link and register with a valid email address, after which you will get the link to join the event.

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Table Talk with Vikram Doctor

Table Talk with Vikram Doctor
Date: Jul 11, 2021
Time: 20:00* IST

Vikram, vikdoc to many who know him on the very few online forums he inhabits (he has, over the years, firmly resisted any efforts to persuade him to get on to social media — I was shocked, shocked, I tell you, to find out he was on Instagram — is always Doccy for me.

We started our advertising careers together us trainees, he in client servicing, me in creative, in Lintas in the 90s. We shared laughs and music, books and woes, and many late nights in Express Towers before we went our different professional ways, and eventually out of advertising. We've kept in touch over the years, talking and meeting infrequently, but when we do, we are able to pick up the threads easily. As he put it once, "one of those semi-work friendships, when you can get close but don't really keep in touch after your workplaces diverge, and yet that basic connection isn't lost and you can always catch up every couple of years or so."

The world, of course, knows him as the food columnist with a cult following, the writer and podcaster who finds fascinating connections that help us understand our world and where it came from.

To steal another sentence from Doccy, it's time we had one of those once-in-two-years coffees.

We will chat mainly about the history of food writing, how to go about food research, stuff like that. You do know, of course, that when old friends meet and chat, the conversation can go all over the place. That's a feature, not a bug. :)

We'll chat for at least an hour, and have questions and discussion for 15 to 30 minutes, though I suspect we'll go on longer.

Giving back

Table Talk will stay free to attend and free to listen to or watch later, for as long as I can afford to keep it that way. But we would like to use our privilege to help others, so we’re asking our guests to choose a cause. Doc has chosen All Creatures Great and Small Sanctuary, which is a registered charitable trust. If you would like to say thank you for this session, and if you can afford to, please donate on their donation page, or via their campaign on Milaap.

Attending

You will need to go to the Zoom link and register with a valid email address, after which you will get the link to join the event.

To get notifications of new episodes and links to past episodes, please subscribe to:
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* If you've attended a Table Talk session before, please note the change in timing. This one will be at 8 p.m., not 9, since Sheru, the canine member of Doc's household, demands an early morning start to his day.

Table Talk with Kriti Monga

 

Kriti is a designer, artist, calligrapher, teacher, writer, and many other things. In her designer avatar, she has worked on restaurants; when she backpacks, she chronicles her travels with paintings in her journals. We will chat about how all these things intersect in her life, and she will show us some of her diaries.

Kriti, by the way, designed the logotype for Table Talk and the flyers, and also the logotype for the Simple recipes for complicated times group.

Table Talk is currently free to attend, but we’re asking all our guests to name covid-19-related fund-raisers they support, and asking attendees to make donations to these causes. Kriti has asked for support for TheWire.in. Please see this page for how you can do that. (The Wire is a non-profit under Indian laws. This means that The Wire's commercial income must remain under 20% of its total income, and donations are how they keep running.)

We’ll chat for at least an hour, and have questions and discussion for 15 to 30 minutes, though I suspect we’ll go on longer.

Register at this Zoom link with an email address linked to a Zoom account (signing up for Zoom is free); this is a security precaution. Registration is open up to the time of the event. After you register, you'll get a confirmation email with your meeting link and password.

To get notifications of new episodes and links to past episodes, please subscribe to this Google Group
and / or this Telegram Channel.

Table Talk with Ranjini Rao

 

Ranjini is a teacher, columnist and author. She wrote the memoir Lessons From My Mother’s Kitchen and, with Ruchira Ramanujam, has written Mango Masala, Book Worms & Jelly Bellies, and History Dishtory, the last two for children. We’ll discuss the craft of writing, food, and writing about food, with some focus on writing for kids, and we’ll hear Ranjini reading from her books.

Table Talk is currently free to attend, but we’re asking all our guests to name covid-19-related fund-raisers they support, and asking attendees to make donations to these causes. Ronj has chosen Mercy Mission, a coalition of 25 NGOs working in Bangalore. Please go to their Milaap page to donate.

We’ll chat for at least an hour, and have questions and discussion for 15 to 30 minutes, though I suspect we’ll go on longer.

Register at this Zoom link with an email address linked to a Zoom account (signing up for Zoom is free); this is a security precaution. Registration is open up to the time of the event. After you register, you'll get a confirmation email with your meeting link and password.

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Table Talk with Kurush Dalal

Our guest for the fourth edition of Table Talk is Dr Kurush Dalal.

Kurush is an archaeologist and anthropologist, an educator, and an inheritor of a culinary legacy (his mother was a legendary caterer (and an archaeologist)). We’ll talk about all these facets of him, and hopefully remember — he’s an entertaining storyteller, so it’s easy to get distracted — our main topic: what the people of the subcontinent ate based on the evidence he and others have literally dug up.

We’ll chat for at least an hour, and have questions and discussion for 15 to 30 minutes, though I suspect we’ll go on longer.

Please join us?

May 30, 2021 21:00 IST.

Register here with an email address linked to a Zoom account (signing up for Zoom is free). This is a security precaution. Registration is open up to the time of the event. After you register, you'll get a confirmation email with your meeting link and password.

Table Talk with Saba Mahjoor

Our guest for the third edition of Table Talk is Saba Mahjoor.

Saba's stories of her phuphee have captivated the Simple recipes for complicated times group. In this Table Talk, we'll listen to a few of these tales live. We'll also chat: about recipes and learning to cook, about growing up in Kashmir and about feminism.

We'll chat for 45 minutes to an hour, and have questions and discussion for 15 to 30 minutes.

When: May 2, 2021 21:00 IST. Register here.

Table Talk with Antoine Lewis

This Sunday, our guest will be pal Antoine Lewis, food writer, culinary experimenter, and, he insists, not an influencer. 

We will talk about this whole authenticity thing, how cuisines influence each other, travel, morph, have descendants, change. Antoine has also been a literary curator, so we will perhaps also talk about food and books.

 We'll chat for 45 minutes to an hour, and have questions for 15 to 30 minutes. So, like an hour to a maximum of ninety minutes. 

You will need to go to this link on Zoom and register with a valid email address, after which you will get the link to join the event.

Please join us?