Familial Environments & Fish Cutlets
I spent a lot of time growing up with my matriarchal family. They are Malayali from Kerala in South India; because of that, life largely revolved around the kitchen table in our longhouse in Seapark. You’d finish your homework and carry out food prep on the same table. One of my earliest memories of this space is learning how to desiccate coconuts on a stool grater. That and using a rolling pin to crush cream crackers.
My grandmother, mum and aunties made fish cutlets every Christmas. It was a dish that I enjoyed eating the most. Instead of using breadcrumbs, they would use the crushed crackers to coat each cutlet.
Family meals are important to me—it’s something my mum has instilled. At Dewakan, you won’t catch a picture of someone sitting on a trash can and eating his meal alone. It’s important that everybody eats at the same time.
The Act & The Art Of Creation
When we were young, we had everything we wanted but we were by no means rich. Mum would make toys for us that in retrospect, enriched our view of how entertainment should be. One Christmas, I received a replica of the Sword of Omens. Do you know ThunderCats? Well, it was the ThunderCats sword. What she did was—and I remember this ever so clearly—was to use a leftover lid from a paint can and to turn it into a shield. She painted it, made a decal of the Thundercats insignia, and put a handle on the back.
It had nothing at all to do with the cartoon, but I didn’t care, man. It was one of the best toys ever.
Mum's penchant for starting things from scratch has shaped the DNA of Dewakan; it's why a lot of our stuff is made from scratch, whether it's plates or cloths. Beyond being creative, mum is resourceful. She doesn’t let a lack of materials determine what she can or cannot do. She does things without fear because she knows she will figure it out along the way. She enjoys the act and the art of creation—I think that’s what's most interesting about my mum.
