Secrets from Sindh

With Sindh: Sindhi Recipes and Stories from a Forgotten Land, Sapna Ajwani aims to educate readers about the Sindhi community, the lost recipes, and how it has evolved since Partition

- SONU M KOTHARI

Because no one knows us, our Partition experience or our cuisine. Someone had to tell the story, right?

states author Sapna Ajwani, as she narrates the experiences of millions who lived through Partition—particularly the Sindhis who lost not just their homeland but also their cultural roots in the process.

Ajwani, who runs a supper club—SindhiGusto—in the UK since 2016, questions, "Ask people around you and see how many even know where Sindh is, or there is a group of people called Sindhis or that when India was partitioned Sindh was not unlike Punjab or Bengal?"

Now, with her book Sindh: Sindhi Recipes and Stories from a Forgotten Land, she wanted to educate readers about this community, and their cuisine.

When many Sindhis became stateless, with their displacement, much of their culinary heritage faded. The book, published by HarperCollins, was penned with an intention to "evoke a sense of pride in Sindhis across faiths and nations."

She also aims to make Sindhi cuisine more accessible and inspire more people to cook traditional home food.

To bring this book to life, Ajwani travelled the "length of Sindh, literally the route of the Indus/Sindhu river," uncovering the region's culinary treasures.

Through her extensive research and travels, she rediscovered long-forgotten recipes.