Long before the multi-hyphenate Manoranjan Byapari became a “lekhak”, he was many other things, including a servant boy at a tea shop, waged labourer at a sweet shop, and the main man at marriage ceremonies, doing everything from cooking, drawing water from the tube well and filling it in the drum, to grinding spices with a mortar, and washing banana-leaves and earthen glasses. It’s while absorbing the sights and sounds of these experiences that Byapari, who is now a first-time MLA in the new West Bengal assembly, developed a relationship with food.

His story gets a fitting place in the inaugural issue of the multilingual genre-agnostic food and eating journal, On Eating (oneating.in), edited by poet-author Sumana Roy and writer Kunal Ray. “I think his essay [The Tales of Sri Sri Bhajahari Radhuni] is one of the best essays written by an Indian, and I hope it will be read by many,” says Roy, who currently teaches at Ashoka University.