Our Story

I remember playing in the large central courtyard at my grandparents’ home in the winter sun. Tall swings with wooden seats and long steel chains reached high up into the sky, the ground covered in terrazzo, characteristic of old homes built in the 1940s and 50s in India. The long line of windows from the family dining room on the left and my grandparents’ clinic on the right looked into that courtyard. For my sister and I, it was our very own private play area.

If we were in the mood, we’d open the small wooden door towards the back to run into the gardens that surrounded the house. Sometimes we’d find a ladder by the vegetable patch and climb it while the gardener pulled out fresh vegetables for lunch. Beetroot, carrot, red and white radish, potatoes, cauliflower, spinach and what was left of the tomatoes after the monkeys had their fill. 

The smell of those fresh veggies mixed with dirt is one I will remember fondly. I didn’t pay much notice then, but that is where our relationship with food began. In the dirt, climbing that rickety ladder and jumping into the veggie patch only to climb it again and again, until our knees hurt and we were covered in mud and that smell of fresh vegetables.