The taste of tra­di­tion: Shel­ley Sub­awalla

Shel­ley Sub­awalla sells Parsi spices not just for busi­ness, but to keep her com­munity’s tra­di­tions alive

“For every spice mix that I sell, I give a recipe on how to make the dish. So even a non­Parsi can make a pop­u­lar dish such as the dhan­sak (meat dish made with len­til and veget­ables). “It helps me keep our com­munity’s tra­di­tions alive,” says Shel­ley Sub­awalla, show­ing the vari­ous Parsi spice mixes, the bafenu achaar, and other products she pre­pares and deliv­ers to cus­tom­ers.

Article in The Hindu

Shel­ley star­ted a Parsi spice mix brand named Zarin’s Secrets with four spice mixes. She learnt the recipes from her grand­mother and named it after her. “I wanted to pre­serve and make the recipes access­ible to the new gen­er­a­tion,” she says.

Shel­ley says she is keen to break the ste­reo­type that Parsi cuisine is exotic. “The food is actu­ally quite sim­ilar to sev­eral other Indian cuisines, some­times the spices used are also the same; it is just the pro­por­tion you mix that makes it dis­tinct,” she says. Her busi­ness star­ted gain­ing atten­tion when people from her com­munity star­ted reach­ing out to her and many even shared their heir­loom recipes with her. “I real­ise every fam­ily has its own her­it­age to safe­guard. I kept expand­ing my port­fo­lio based on inputs from dif­fer­ent Parsi fam­il­ies and today I sell 80 products,” she says.

Shel­ley says most tra­di­tional Parsi dishes have a mean­ing attached to them based on the cul­tural val­ues of the com­munity. For instance, the dhan­sak, which every Parsi loves hav­ing on their menu, can­not be made on aus­pi­cious days; the whole­some meal is related to mourn­ing. She says, it is dif­fi­cult to take away the cul­tural annota­tions food holds. “I make dhan­sak reg­u­larly at home every Sunday. But if the day coin­cides with some­body’s birth­day in the fam­ily or any other aus­pi­cious event, then I do not cook it,” she explains.

Speak­ing about the pickles she makes, Shelly says her favour­ite is the iconic Parsi pickle bafenu. “It is an entire Alf­onso mango, which is first cooked and then pickled. Parsi achaars are a blend of sweet, sour, and spicy fla­vours,” she says.

Shel­ley rues that not only has the Parsi com­munity shrunk in size but along with that, many tra­di­tions and recipes have reached the verge of extinc­tion. “The young­sters are not inter­ested in ancient tra­di­tions as they are busy with their pro­fes­sional com­mit­ments. They always look for something that can be ready in 10 minutes; some of these dishes could be time con­sum­ing. So I try to keep the tra­di­tions alive for them with ready spice mixes. When the word spreads, people out­side our com­munity also become aware of our exist­ence,” she says.

Shel­ley points out that the dwind­ling Parsi pop­u­la­tion is also aging. “For them to move around in a city like Delhi is not easy. So when I send them the tra­di­tional Parsi spice mixes, there is a con­nect.”

The Parsi pop­u­la­tion in Delhi, accord­ing to the Mem­bers Dir­ect­ory 2023 of the Delhi Parsi Anju­man (DPA) lists 470 indi­vidu­als in the city. With the vari­ous com­bin­a­tions of her spice mixes, Shel­ley hopes Parsi cuisine will not fade out. She says, “as long as people love food and love to exper­i­ment, there is hope.”