By Anindya Sundar Basu
Pikturenama, a name like a journey
Are you missing your favorite chicken chilly or pav bhaji stall? Is the spot close to our heart lost amid the lockdown? The cheese pizza place or the yummy chicken crispy is only in our memories? We have listed all your favorite food dishes and easy recipes right here so you can try it all at home! Madhushree and Anindya Sundar Basu, known for her mouth-watering dishes on social networking sites, had an exclusive interview with the reporter of Prittle Prattle News.
How did it all start – a start which was like a misfire
We never thought we would do the cooking for a living. We still cannot think of food as living as it’s yet not a sustainable income in the Indian context for home chefs. I was at a very senior HR position in a reputed company of India dealing with Global clients and Madhushree had, by that time, quit her sales job and opened up service apartments and two restaurants in Pune and Mumbai. The restaurants were her dream project, one being a 120 cover in Mumbai. Love for food was among the very few common interests we had, and we planned to open up a chain of Chinese restaurants across India, starting with Kolkata. I quit my corporate job and joined Madhushree. Things exactly did not fall in place, and the plans for opening the restaurants had shelved. The other two restaurants were also not operating as per expectation, and soon, she had to close them down. The dream got packed neatly and shoved up the cupboard like an old photo album, only to revisited in some rare melancholic moments.
Destiny pulls you with an attraction bigger than any force
We got into our family business, the food love and eating out continued as much as experimentation at the home kitchen. It was not 7 – 8 years ago, and yet social media was bursting. Most didn’t know what a blog was, there was no Instagram, and one would have killed you if you predicted that someday one could upload a recipe in Tiktok. I have been a keen photographer, and in 2014, after our Nepal holiday, I thought of archiving the beautiful photographs as my portfolio. A year before, I had lost 3500 pictures from Greece and Turkey after my laptop crashed. I didn’t want to take any chance anymore. I went ahead and opened a blog called Pikturenama, intending to post and share my travel pictures and stories. As the name suggests, there was no trace of any food anywhere in the title. It was a twisted Picture with K and named as a story. After a few months of travel posts, it was one eureka moment when a banana bread with maple buttercream, a fried banana, was captured, and that was the first food post on Pikturenama.
Can you share your plans or journey ahead with us?
Yes, sure! The most significant moments in our lives happened insignificantly. Much later, we realized that we never gave importance to this watershed moment. Soon reactions started pouring in and encouragement too, and we started posting recipes. We didn’t strategize any genre, any format, or even thought of trying to come out as a specialist in a particular cuisine. The thought was simple- whatever gets cooked at home and we get time to shoot, we write a post about it. One unique aspect of the home kitchen was the confluence of Bangal and Ghoti. My mother passed on many family heirloom recipes to Madhushree, and Madhushree cooked recipes; we never had before. So if an aloo post was getting made in a Bankura style, chital macher muitha was also getting prepared. Soon, unknowingly we got into archiving family recipes. Madhushree called up her octogenarian 90 plus grandma now, and then, I would ask all his relatives about new methods in family gatherings.
Madhushree took an interest in cooking from her college days. She would note down recipes from cooking shows on TV and take baking recipes from her neighbors’. She still has and cherishes those handwritten recipe diaries of hers. When she went to Cardiff for her post-graduation, she fell in love with ingredients, their flavors. She experimented in her university kitchen with whatever parts were available and became quite popular with her house and flatmates. After marriage, we would entertain guests quite often, and Madhushree would find an innate pleasure in cooking several courses of food from scratch.
While sharing her recipes on the blog, we collaborated with a friend and did a small Bengali cuisine pop up in our building terrace. We had bookings for 42 people, and that pop up was a success. Many social media, as well as different publications, spoke about it. Soon in that year only, another food festival happened at Chilekotha, a Bengali specialty restaurant. That led to a grand Durga Puja pop up at Mustard Restaurant, Mumbai, all through Durga Puja. Since then, there have been a few more plans, but before they could culminate, the country went into lockdown.
With so many people stuck indoors, queries flood every day concerning recipes, kitchen tips, and so much more. Lockdown also motivated us to make videos for our youtube channel. No one talks about the struggles, especially with creating content while at home with two children and their needs. There is also the insecurity about whether anyone will like your content, will appreciate it or not. But the thumb rule is to keep going on and do what you love. If you believe in something and are putting in the hard work, the results are bound to show. It has been a great journey until now, and despite all the struggle, it is a slow but steady walk towards success.
Where are you active, and where can people reach you -Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, youtube?
Prittle Prattle News can reach anywhere.
And we are from Blogspot to TikTok – content creation has changed, evolved, and redefined itself almost every year. One of the emerging trends has been the importance of visual representation and storytelling. From long-form writing to hashtags, it has been a drastic change, and the importance of photography and gram-worthy foods are suddenly on the rise. During our journey, we realized the importance of styling and food presentation. Madhushree and I both indulged in an in-depth study of contemporary food photography and tried to incorporate that into our work. The significant change also happened with the onset of technology, and mobile food photography became an essential aspect for content creators.
We have believed that each one has a voice that suits a particular social media, and one should play to that strength. We are reachable on these platforms:
Blog – https://pikturenama.com
Media Mentions – Media mentions
Twitter – Anindya0909
Instagram – PikturenamaPhotography work – Pikturenama Studios
