Radio Finely Chopped by Kalyan Karmakar

Hi, my name is Kalyan Karmakar. I am a food writer based in Mumbai. This is the first episode of my new podcast, ‘The tails of my life.’ A title given by my wife for a book she thinks I should write. No, it’s not about food. It’s about the cats in my life. Someone who disliked cats till November 2019 and whose word now centres around them. Do tune in as I stories from our lives together and tell y...

Pre recording. K: What should we talk of today? K: Let's talk about eggs. I had some lovely eggs for breakfast. K: So did I. You do realise that by this logic we will do a podcast on eggs every week?! K: What a lovely idea! In this episode Kurush and Kalyan speak about poached eggs and French toasts and of how Bengalis revolutionaries have 'redefined them both,' while the Parsis remained loyal to...

#foodocracyforher is where I speak to women doing amazing work in the world of food. My next guest, Shormistha Mukherjee, is not in the food business. Yet. Not directly at least. Though as the co-owner of the digital agency Flying Cursor, this former legacy advertising professional has worked with clients in the food space and with creators too. She is an enthusiastic patron of home chefs and was...

Megha Phull was born in Bhillai, grew up in Delhi and lived in various cities ranging from Glasgow to Mumbai before moving to Singapore last year. She worked in the fashion industry after completing her higher studies in the field. She took a break when her son was born 12 years back, conscious of the fact that she would like to resume her career once her son was a bit older. Resume she did, but n...

Find purpose and work will follow, they say. Dr Tatyana Dias, whom I interviewed for the latest episode of the #foodocracyforher podcast, is a great example of this.  Her sister, Veruschka, was born when Tatyana was 4. 4 years later the doctors diagnosed Veruschka as being autistic. From then on the lives of young Tatyana and her parents revolved around Veruschka's well being. Tatyana felt ve...

I am thrilled to  present Trishla Lunawat of Meal On Leaf in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Trishla is a Marwari who was born in Coimbatore in Tamil Nadu. She was exposed to the food of different states of south India while growing up in Coimbatore, with her father turning out to be her cooking guru. Trishla then moved to Mumbai, where she lives with her husband and son. During the...

In this episode of their podcast, Kurush and Kalyan talk about the concept of barter and its relevance when it comes to social media marketing, they skirt away from the four letter B word in the world of Indian food which can be contentious on social media and move on to biryani, a topic that often leads to serious debates between the two of them. Each takes a swipe at the biryani from the other's...

In this episode of their podcast, Kurush and Kalyan reminisce about the street food culture of Bombay and Calcutta (as the cities were then known) of their childhood and youth. From Kurush you will hear memories of the samosa-wala outside St Xavier's School, his first vada pav (which he remembers far more vividly than his first crush) and the secret of what went into kebabs outside Novelty Cinema....

I am thrilled to drop the first #foodocracyforher episode of 2022 which features Tanvi Shah from Mumbai. She is an economics student who then studied MIS. She was always interested in cooking, but did not get a chance to do so till she went abroad to study. She came back, got married, ran a handicrafts enterprise. Life was on cruise mode till one day a question from her then 9 year old son, after...

I sacrificed my afternoon nap to drop the historic pilot episode of the podcast that will change your life forever: 'K&K Dig Food,' and you have not heard it yet. Seriously? I mean, come on.... please listen to it. Pretty please. We need motivation to make the next episode! (KK)  In this episode, Dr Kurush Dalal and (son of a doctor) Kalyan Karmakar give you a peek into their bromance as...

I am proud to present Investment banker turned independent chef entrepreneur, chef Hemal Shah in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer.  Hemal is a Mumbai girl, whose father is an oncologist and mother a gynaecologist. It was a given that she would be a doctor and she passed her pre-med and got into one of Mumbai's top medical colleges. She then realised that she did not want to lead the so...

I am proud to present food blogger turned author, Deeba Rajpal in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer AND of my new podcast series #EatingBooks. Deeba was interested in baking from the time she was in school and wryly says that she belongs to an era where dalda featured in baking recipes. Fast forward to a few years later when she was married and her husband gifted her a digital camera. Deeba,...

I am proud to present home chef turned restaurant owner Surekha Walke, of Chaitanya Restaurant and Mother of Malvan, in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Surekha ji was born in Malvan in coastal Maharashtra. While growing up she was interested in everything but cooking...sports, theatre, politics (in college)..even though she came from a family that owned a Malvani bakery and sweets shop. S...

Folks far more accomplished and adept than me have written about the exemplary work of Professor Abhijeet Banerjee. I won't make any attempts to do so. I know my limits. In 2019 Banerjee was the co- winner of the Nobel Prize for Economics. #nuff said as the kids say these days. What you might not know, is that Abhijit da (this is what I settled on after I asked him 'should I call you Mr Banerjee,...

I am proud to present home chef Sonali Naik of Divine Flavour in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Sonali is a Mumbai based interior designer who loves and lives to eat. A conscious eating and exercise based regime helped her lose 40 kilos a couple of years back. "I wanted to feel good and eat clean," she says. Then came the covid pandemic. Her interior design work dried up. She was sitting...

I am proud to present Chef Amninder Sandhu in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer.     Amninder Sandhu was a science student and a very good one at that. Her father's dream of her becoming a doctor lying at the back of her mind. One day, while playing around with test tubes in the lab, epiphany struck her. It is cooking that she had always loved. What was she doing in a sci...

I am proud to present Vernika Awal in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Vernika Awal is a Punjabi who has lived in different parts of India while growing up thanks to her father's 'transferrable job', but never in Punjab. She did her postgraduate studies in media, worked in legacy media (Times of India), then with the site Exchange4Media, before she decided to go independent as a writer. In...

I am proud to present Sreedevi Lakshmikutty AKA Devi in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer. Devi grew up in in Trivandram and then moved to Mumbai where she and her husband, Ramesh, worked in LIC. They then went to Kentucky where Sridevi decided to do a mid careers masters in Sociology. That is when she awakened to the challenges that the agrarian sector faces. An understanding which got deep...

I am proud to present Sanjukta Dutta nee Das in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer.    Sanjukta Das is a passionate narrater of the story of Assamese food. She grew up around the tea gardens of Dibrugarh in Assam and then went to Ahmedabad for further studies and later to Mumbai. She and her husband decided to return to Assam after spending a short while in Mumbai as the pace o...

I am proud to present Pritha Sen in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer.    Look up any article on the food of Bengal and its history in recent times and chances are that you will find a quote from Pritha Sen in it. She has been called a food historian and anthropologist, though she likes to call herself a food researcher. Her story did not start with food though. She was a teacher a...

 #FoodocracyForHer is series in which I speak to women entrepreneurs and achievers from the world of food to get inspired by them and to share their stories with you. It's fair to call freelance content creators as entrepreneurs too as someone had once pointed out to me. In this episode (recorded in January 2021) I speak to Dr Nandita Iyer  @Saffron Trail  who is one of India's pion...

I am proud to present Reshma Mane, the Mumbai based home chef behind 'Every Aroma', in the latest episode of #FoodocracyForHer.   Reshma is a Mumbai girl with roots in Kolhapur. She did her MBA after she finished her graduation, the way her parents wanted her to, before following her passion for food. Reshma is a big believer in learning and upskilling herself and did the certification c...

I am proud to present Sohini Basu @lifeoutsidemrsmagpie who runs Mrs Magpie @mrsmagpiecafe , Kolkata, in this episode of #FoodocracyForHer . Sohini Basu grew up in Kolkata, went to the UK to study fashion and spent the initial years of her career in Kolkata working for Sabyasachi, the famous designer. She then went to Paris to study the business side of fashion. She fell in love there...with the q...

The latest episode on the #comfortfinelychopped podcast series is on maached mudo diye dal (fish head dal). I spoke about how I cook it and about how Mumbai first felt like home to me the day I first recreated this speciality from my mom’s kitchen in our little kitchen here.  In this series I speak about everyday dishes which give me joy. And why they do so. Hope you like it.   #indianfo...

I am proud to present Nooresha Kably, who is the chef owner of Izumi Bandra, in this episode of #FoodocracyForHer.   Izumi Bandra has taken the Indian restaurant scene by storm within its few years of existence and who better than Nooresha Kably to tell its story. The story of how Nooresha, who earlier ran a sushi delivery outfit with a former chef from Zenzi (who is in a senior role with Izumi no...