Bøger af Shoba Narayan

What is the role of spirituality in your life? Do you pray? Is religion part of your identity or does it make you uncomfortable? To answer these and other questions, Shoba Narayan approaches faith through perhaps its most primal and nourishing aspect: food. She partakes of sacred food in shrines across India-- Puri's bhog, Amritsar's langar, Palani's panchamritam, Mathura's pedas, Ambalapuzha's paal-payasam, Kashi's sweets, Jaipur's rabdi, Ajmer's kesaria bhat, Madurai's dosai, Jewish halva in Mumbai, and communal feasts in Udupi, Goa and the Kumbh Mela. Sacred food is linked to history, myth, and identity of specific shrines and their faithful. Food & Faith explores this powerful yet intimate connection. Shoba Narayan has written about food and faith for over two decades. She was the Hinduism columnist for Beliefnet and won the James Beard MFK Fisher Award for distinguished food writing. She has been a correspondent for Gourmet magazine and has written about culture, food and faith in her columns and essays for Hindustan Times and The National Abu Dhabi. Food & Faith brings together two of Shoba's passions: spirituality and food.

The elevator door opens. A cow stands inside, angled diagonally to fit. It doesn’t look uncomfortable, merely impatient. “It is for the housewarming ceremony on the third floor,” explains the woman who stands behind the cow, holding it loosely with a rope. She has the sheepish look of a person caught in a strange situation who is trying to act as normal as possible. She introduces herself as Sarala and smiles reassuringly. The door closes. I shake my head and suppress a grin. It is good to be back. When Shoba Narayan—who has just returned to India with her husband and two daughters after years in the United States—asks whether said cow might bless her apartment next, it is the beginning of a beautiful friendship between our author and Sarala, who also sells fresh milk right across the street from that thoroughly modern apartment building. The two women connect over not only cows but also family, food, and life. When Shoba agrees to buy Sarala a new cow, they set off looking for just the right heifer, and what was at first a simple economic transaction becomes something much deeper, though never without a hint of slapstick.The Milk Lady of Bangalore immerses us in the culture, customs, myths, religion, sights, and sounds of a city in which the twenty-first century and the ancient past coexist like nowhere else in the world. It’s a true story of bridging divides, of understanding other ways of looking at the world, and of human connections and animal connections, and it’s an irresistible adventure of two strong women and the animals they love.