Sharanya is a writer from New Delhi, India. Her work centres on issues of justice, identity and conflict with a focus on food. But she is currently transitioning into writing more essays about selfhood, and the ways bodies move through the world.
Recently, she was noted in a list of cultural critics of colour by Jack Jones Literary arts and also won an award for a piece on saffron farming in India-controlled Kashmir. She speaks Hindi, Urdu, Tamil, English, Dutch and some French. Many years ago, she wrote a children's book about an 11-year-old vampire afraid of blood.
Featured Writing
Never Have I Ever: The commodification of
South-Asian identity politics
Mangal Media, May 2020
"Representation brings with it a certain amount of responsibility to interrogate, which Kaling seems hesitant to do. The frameworks that she creates are not malleable enough to include the multiplicity of South-Asians. Merely existing is not a dialogue with other brown people."
Coming home, One Word at a Time
Longreads, March 2019
“The way the meat melts off the bone, the way the fat renders into the onions, the way it all comes together, that is Urdu,” my granduncle Gulzar Naqvi used to say, comparing his favorite language to Nihari, his favorite meat stew. “It is not language, it is temperament, and it must be felt.”
The world's most expensive spice is on the verge of disappearing (Conde Nast Food Writing award '19)
Eater, February 2019
“Agriculture needs young people, needs motivation, [and] no one wants to go out to be confronted by a group of men holding guns,” says Umer Sami, an aspiring Pampore entrepreneur who wants to boost the presence of Kashmiri saffron in the online marketplace. “Young men have either begun to take up arms and stones against the struggle, or just stay home. Think about it — in your 20s, you live in one of the most violent places in the world. Would you do something that ties you to its land, or something that gets you out?”
