Aikanthika, a farm in central Karnataka (PC: Aikanthika)
At an age when most children are busy making reels and exploring the world of social media, Visista, 20-year-old from Karnataka, had already found a favourite place to learn, her grandmother’s kitchen. Today, the young woman has documented more than 250 traditional recipes, many of which are gradually disappearing from everyday kitchens. Her younger brother, Varchas, 17, also grew up following the same approach.
Here she was introduced to a way of life closely connected with nature and traditional food practices. She sees her grandmother Lakshmi prepare everyday meals and tries her hand at cooking and helping her. What began with an innocent curiosity about making chapatis has now grown into a passion and an effort to preserve traditional Indian recipes. Through her initiative, TRUE FOOD, she is bringing forgotten dishes, indigenous ingredients and age-old cooking techniques back into life and the food world. Visista grew up at Aikanthika, a farm in central Karnataka. She got interested in cooking when she was only four. Her grandmother Lakshmi would make chapatis for lunch every day, and the little girl would watch her closely and she eventually got curious. She did not initially know how to knead the dough or make a ‘gol’ chapati. Her mother, Kruthii, and grandmother became her earliest cooking influences. The satisfaction of combining ingredients, preparing a dish from scratch and watching her family enjoy the final result made cooking particularly special to her. Tradional wood cooking (PC: Aikanthika) The oven opened up an entirely new world of possibilities. She began experimenting with cakes, cookies, muffins and other baked goods. However, it was not just the cooking process that fascinated her, but also wanted to know where recipes came from. Unlike most children her age, Visista never attended a conventional school. She followed Swashikshan, a self-directed approach to learning, at Aikanthika. She never sat inside a classroom but learnt through books, the internet and conversations with her parents who encouraged her to explore cooking as a subject.
