Heirloom Kitchen: A personal look at late Shanta Bai Pilliwar’s quaint kitchen

There can never be an alternative to the achars and chutneys that our dadis and nanis have prepared with love and fed to all of us. In an attempt to evoke the nostalgia of her great grandmother’s phenomenal cooking, Soumya Bhave organised a multi-dimensional, almost museum-like experience exhibition in Raipur with the help of her mother Vanaja Bhave.

The ensemble, Straight from the Heirloom Kitchen consists of artefacts and personal belongings of Late Shanta Bai Pilliwar who was revered as the headstrong matriarch of the Pilliwar family and was also considered the most incredible cook of all times. This exhibition was part of a larger project which was mentored by an online archive-building incubation programme called ‘Constructing Personal Archives 2020’ under the aegis of Curating for Culture.

Watch this: A visit to the quaint kitchen of late Shanta Bai Pilliwar

The two-day exhibition held in Raipur, Chhattisgarh provided a peek into Shanta Bai Pilliwar’s life as the head chef of her family’s household. One can experience Shanta Bai’s persona through her personal belongings such as her saree, vanity box or Shringhar Peti, a pair of spectacles and other objects of the everyday mundane. In another corner of the room, one can see and touch Shanta Bai’s wooden cabinet which was used by her to store pickles, special savoury snacks such as Chakkali and Gathia and occasionally to hide sour tamarind candies and caramel toffees from her grandchildren and later, her great-grandchildren.

A sense of longing to return to one’s childhood is triggered by Vanaja Bhave’s flawless audio narration in which she shares her memories of her grandmother and her cooking. She also shares some of her grandmother’s most crowd-pleasing food recipes with the visitor in the audio tour. One can also notice that some of the objects on display are more than 50 years old; some coins, photographs and utensils dating back to the pre-independence India.

For lovers of history and antiquities, the exhibition provides an interesting engagement with some obsolete kitchen appliances that belonged in every Indian kitchen four decades ago. For those looking to relive their childhood, the exhibition becomes a time portal.