The one where I dabble in divine secrets
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On a mild spring evening in a second-hand bookstore in Bangalore, I find a newish copy of the book. It is by Rebecca Wells, enticingly called Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood - and being one forever in awe of said kind of secrets and any kind of sisterhood, I buy it immediately. Over the next two days, I am gripped by the gorgeous world of Louisiana it brings to life, with a cast of eccentric, often heart-breaking, characters. And then there are the flavours of the crawfish etouffee and duck gumbo cooking, the subtle shifts of sunlight on the bayou, the songs and sounds of the black quarters at the edge of town, the clinks of tall glasses filled with iced lemonade as the rich heat oozes slowly from the cotton farmlands and fills the air with a sort of sorrow. There is that quality of ripeness,....
The one where an inspiring cookbook is found
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One day in the library I had an epiphany. It came in the form of a slim little yellow hardbound book that nobody had borrowed in a long time. It was called The Pedant in the Kitchen and was by Julian Barnes, half-mistakenly kept in the cookery section, though it really belonged in philosophy. Never mind that though. It was a little treat. In a fundamental way, this book comforted a deep sense of inadequacy in me - but more on that later. It is more important to explain at this point what I was doing in the cookery section of the library anyway. Long(ish) story. In the year 1973 my mother had made a tiny slice of history in her part of India; it is Jharkhand today, but in those days it was still a part of Bihar. She became one of the first girl....
More about Devapriya Roy
Devapriya Roy has degrees in English literature and performance studies from Presidency College, Calcutta, and Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, and adds a languishing PhD (on the Natya Shastra if you must know) to her list of mustfinishes. Her first novel, The Vague Woman's Handbook, was published earlier this year by HarperCollins. At the moment she is working on The Heat and Dust Project, the story of an eccentric journey through India on an extreme budget, along with spouse Saurav Jha.
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