Why tava, why brew?
Hi, and welcome home.
Every winter wraps me in mist, memory, and a retroactive sense of magic. Before I know it I’m propelled backwards into a default state of nostalgia: a byproduct I credit to having spent my childhood and early youth in Dehradun, India. Once a town only half the size of its name (“Dehra” if you want to get academic about it, “Doon” if your heart is a beating thing), my hometown has outgrown the word. It is a City now. And it makes me feel anachronistic addressing it as such, with its Highways and Malls and an ever-growing prospectus of eclectic cafes. Every return brings up new buildings and old ghosts. The streets are wider. The trees thin. I forget addresses, and get lost on the very streets I grew up mapping.
I was only two months away from leaving Doon for Vancouver when the city’s first Starbucks spawned in Jakhan. It was in the last embers of 2022. My best friend and I shared an (amusing yet cavernously disappointing) pumpkin spice latte to see what the fuss was all about (neither of us had been to a Starbucks before). I caught the sunset early, watched the winterline go from tangerine to a lazy burnt blue, and made my aching peace with leaving. It was neither my first departure, nor my last goodbye. Yet somehow, it’s the one that has always felt the most true.
Over the years, I have cultivated an obsessive interest in the unending pursuit of home, its mythical permanence, the cost of leaving, and how choosing rootlessness pays. I found a way to make my entire Master’s degree about it, and spent sixteen months of my life conducting a textual analysis of the depiction of immigrant homes in two pivotal early 2000s South Asian immigrant fiction novels. I watched The Namesake four times and sobbed through it thrice. I became both a participant and observer of the international student experience. I defended my thesis in April 2025, and while I have no dearth of safe spaces to call home, my voice falters when I do.
I know from more than having done my research that a home once left is a reality forever altered and a memory edified. The gap is a lifelong ache, one that is as transformative as it is capacious. This pain is as true for those who remain rooted and watch their loved ones go as it is for those with a stamped passport and a one-way ticket to an electric tomorrow. The pillars may stand the seasons, but the cement cracks. The paint peels. Someone shuts a door too hard on their way out.
We’re all making and remaking home even when we don’t realise it. The answer often lies in negotiation. Though invisible, it’s labour all the same. I have found myself laying fresh bricks over the three years since I have left: snug in my twenties, deciding that my tea is going to taste cinnamony in a way that my mother’s never did, or revisiting Shah Rukh films in new and not always flattering luster. Every day, I create new rituals for new selves and give thanks at the altars of the old. tava & brew is an extension of this pursuit: a space where I can ruminate on the patchwork of what home is becoming for me, on culture and my place in it, and bring you along for the ride.
Why Tava?
Because I like my perspectives slow-cooked and evolving, my reflections flavourful, and my conversations crisp. Because if it isn’t clear already, I am a professional nostalgic, and sometimes I daydream too hard and leave the stove on for longer than intended. Because I want to use this space to detangle belonging and dissect what it means to be an Indian woman in a country with a complex relationship with immigration, while we as a species are the most globalised we’ve ever been. I want to visit and revisit South Asian topics, not only as an exploration and reassertion of identity, but as an archive of becoming.
Why Brew?
Because I find myself and several loved ones in an era of fractured youth: life edges and burns and ultimately (or so I’ve heard), it rewards. And whether it is ruminations on love and luck, the woes of job hunting in this economy, books that make me gush (or otherwise), or simply finding ways to breathe easier in a life that comes with no manual, I want this to be a home for the annoyingly abstract but also oddly specific challenges of this time, of grieving snakeskin and birthing myself anew among other beautifully terrifying things.
For all intents and purposes, this Substack is a limb of home for myself and my ramblings. It’s complete with an open door, and hinges that often need grease and love in equal measure. Settle down, and make yourself comfortable. I’m so happy you’re here.
Wholesome read 💕