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About

Hi! Welcome to my blog Nanimas and thanks for stopping by.

Nanima means ‘maternal grandma’ in Gujarati and this blog is all about the traditions passed down the generations of my family – from my Nanima to my Mum to me. It’s a record of all the things that I’ll hopefully one day pass on to my own kids – including our family recipes and how we celebrate different festivals and occasions.

I was born and raised in the UK and although we have Indian heritage, my parents and grandparents were raised in East Africa so our culture has evolved over the years. Originally we’re from Gujarat, a state in the North West of India – known for it’s delicious vegetarian food as well as festivals like Navratri with it’s Garba celebrations (a type of traditional folk dance).

My older sister and I grew up in Essex and like so many other British Asians lived over a blurred line of cultures. We were raised on both shak rotli (Gujarati curry and chapattis) and pizza with everything in between. We danced to Taal and other Bollywood songs as well as making up our own Britney Spears routines (we never got the toy head mics but I’ll keep dreaming…). We still celebrate Diwali then Christmas every year – any excuse for a big celebration and more presents!

We went to Gujarati school on Saturday mornings and learnt to read and write. I’ll admit that I’d struggle to write in Gujarati anymore and can only read slowly (something that I really need to work on). I speak in Gujarati to my grandparents but rarely to my own parents and can start to feel the language slip away slightly so I’m desperate to keep a firm grip so that it doesn’t get lost. All of our family traditions have been passed down verbally so losing the language would effectively mean losing the culture. And so we come back full circle to why I started this blog – to record my family traditions for future generations.

I hope you enjoy reading the posts and I would love to hear from you about your own family traditions and recipes. If you have any questions or suggestions then please get in touch – either comment on the posts or send me an email. You can also follow us on Instagram (@nanimasblog) and Facebook (@nanimasblog).

Thanks,

Priyanka