Scrolling through Pune-based jewellery designer Aditi Bharadwaj’s Instagram handle, The Nanima Project, is like leafing through old, stacked-away albums and diaries. There’s that grassy odour of yellowing paper, sepia-tinted photographs of once-young faces, hurriedly written recipes slipping out of pages, and a reassurance that all was well once. But what makes Bharadwaj’s social media project comforting are the delicious food memories attached to the visuals that include postcards of recipes exchanged between members of a pan-India ladies’ club in the ’80s, menu and cutlery on the ill-fated RMS Titanic, vintage advertisements of Parle, Rex syrups and Parisian tea brands, monochrome portraits of the Taj Mahal Palace and Watson’s hotels in their early days, and of course, a spread of dishes ranging from tinned biscuits to Roce-special pork bafat. 

The 34-year-old tells us that the idea to crowd-source food memories, pictures, recipes and experiences started cooking in the lockdown, after she came across her grandmother’s diary of recipes. “My grandmother, Chandervati Buxi was from Multan, Pakistan, so their food habits were very different from ours. The diary was filled with these notes of which family member likes what, and had contributions by my grandmother and my mother. As someone who has always been fascinated by culinary traditions, I wanted to preserve these recipes, and their wisdom for my daughter,” elaborates Bharadwaj. Food memories, she asserts, are enjoyed by everybody, as in India especially, we express our love through khaatirdaari or feeding people.