This Story teller session….
You are the Story
Childhood memories often influence people’s opinion about the importance of family dinners. Growing up in India, I was lucky to have parents who enforced the act of eating together as a family. Eating together was a ritual at the Peters road House in Chennai, India, where I was born. I grew up with an extended household. Any given time, we had at least 14 people, and my grandmothers and my mother and my aunt were the foremost chefs in my house. They’d start planning the menus a day earlier, deciding what vegetables to buy, and what to cook for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. This ritual went on day after day.
While growing up, the stories we shared while cooking and around the table are my most cherished memories. We’d sit on the floor as children and eat with our hands, and it never felt like punishment, but rather was the time we all enjoyed together. Even today, I share these stories with my children, my siblings, and cousins, and we get very nostalgic about our days in Peters Road. Though both my parents passed away since I moved to the USA with my kids, the meals around the table are very still special.
When Joel and I moved to Moorman house, we decided to start having a Southern Indian vegetarian cooking class and share my story and recipes of my grandmother and mother while growing up in India. At the table, the participants who came to take my classes also started to share their stories. Listening to their stories is always a moving and robust experience. It was a lovely tradition to have carried over from India!
Everyone at the table always wants to know how Joel and I met. And we would recount how we met at the Indian restaurant Cumin that Chef Yajan started in 2003. Almost everyone who had been to that restaurant became nostalgic for a space that is not there anymore. It was the best contemporary Indian restaurant in Cincinnati. This nostalgia spurred the idea to bring Yajan over to our place where we could all meet again. And here you all are! Storytelling through food is a co-created experience because it is natural for everyone to want to share the stories in life at the table. We all want to tell them.
I view storytelling and food as a co-creation since when I’m telling it, and someone is for sure witnessing this action and influencing my telling and the story. Otherwise, there is no point for telling, and the Art of storytelling cannot exist. Telling a story is about envisioning an experience for someone else. Continue Reading after the photos.
What is often true is that our stories are not viewed as Fine Art. And in my experience, Fine Art is always a story first and performance second. We seldom get opportunities to share an experience on a stage where people genuinely listen. My intention is to make this table a sacred space, available to all who want to share their story.
Storytelling is an ageless recurring performance across all cultures. I hope this evening will be experienced as a layered media of good food, good company, and a comfortable sharing with your fellow travelers on this journey of life.