Sharanya is a writer from New Delhi, India. She has written before for Longreads, Scroll, Eater, Roads and Kingdoms, and Atlas Obscura among others.
She writes about food, language, civil conflict and the commodification of culture, and is currently writing more essays about selfhood, and the ways bodies move through the world.
Recently, she was noted in a list of cultural critics by Jack Jones Literary arts. 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
A ‘Forgotten Holocaust’ Is Missing From Indian Food Stories
Atlas Obscura, September 2020
"Indian food annals ignore the moments of hunger endured by millions, focusing instead on taste-centric gastronomy, laying out tables of opulence and abundance as normative, and foraging the past for pleasantries to set as placeholders for the history of Indian cuisine. Meanwhile, foods that fed and continue to sustain the powerless remain largely ignored."
On Stillness
Montez Press, August 2020
"Tokarczuk writes of how motion is embedded in her body, she in the friction that comes from movement, she becomes alive, a woman, a person, a writer. I often feel like Togarzcuk, understanding what I need and whom I love only when I have set off somewhere. But what if I moved because I was afraid that when I stopped, I had to deal with the consequences the things it created and destroyed in its wake? What if in motion, I was charming, effusive and intelligent but in stillness, I remained unpleasant, volatile, and a monster?"
Whose Food City? The Northeastern restaurants of Humayunpur, Delhi
Vittles London, August 2020
"But whenever Delhi was heralded as a food city, it was in tubular linearity that presented glossy, predictable versions of it, instead of what it was actually like — layered, temperamental, and riddled with unfairness at each bend."
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 (Winner, Conde Nast 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?”
