Sep 14 2025 to Sep 14 2025 11:30 a.m.

Price: 1000 Book/Buy

Where

Courtyard Koota

Ground floor, Good Earth Tarana Good Earth Malhar, near Rajarajeswari medical college Kambipura, Bengaluru, Karnataka 560074

Event Description

Neidhal Kanmanam
Seasoned By the Sea
Neidhal Kanmanam is a bilingual book written by Niranjana and Bhagath Singh.

This is a community coastal cookbook. That is, it contains a collection of recipes, methods and stories about making seafood from the inhabitants of India’s Coromandel coast. For that reason, it is equally a book about the labour, ecology and the collective joy that ultimately makes the recipes delicious.

Appropriately, the cookbook begins in the Ennore-Pazhaverkadu wetlands, a socio-ecologically rich geography where diverse forms of fishing are practised, but tastes are partial to prawns and crabs that have thrived in the wetlands. The book, then, meanders through coastal Chennai, its bustling Kasimedu harbour and the famed Akka Kadais of Pattinapakkam & Besant Nagar, ending on a note of impending change in Pondicherry.

Bhagath Singh will be joining us and will be in conversation with Bharathi Govindasamy

Event Support : Sruthi Krishnan.

Library@Koota

As part of the Library at Koota, the book has prompted many questions, our relationship with food, especially sea food, and through this conversation, we hope to understand the lives and culture of where our seafood comes from.

We will be serving a selection of recipes from this book.

Do join us for this session.

About the Authors

Niranjana is a journalist turned geographer who’s interested in the many lives lived around Chennai’s myriad waters – lakes, rivers, canals, marshes, the sea. She teaches Human Geography in Queen Mary University of London.

Bhagath Singh is a postdoctoral researcher based in the French Institute of Pondicherry. Born & raised in Ennore, he brings his academic expertise to support and organise around coastal environmental struggles.

Palani Kumar is an award winning photo journalist and visual ethnographer documenting land, labour and life amidst the waterways. He reports for PARI (People’s Archive of Rural India) and has trained young photographers leading to an exhibition titled North Chennai, Reframed held at Chennai.

Anthoni Guruz is an artist and graphic designer based in Puducherry. His life journey has been as unpredictable as the lines and directions that his art pursues. Anthoni started out as a sticker artist and banner designer before joining a well-known printing house in Chennai as a paginator, where he learnt the basics of bookmaking and graphic design. Working his way to the College of Fine Arts, Chennai, he graduated with an MFA and MPhil in Visual Communications. He is currently pursuing PhD research at Thanjavur Tamil University.

Shanmuganantham is a publisher based in North Chennai. He is deeply interested in nature in the city and the wider world. He publishes a fortnightly magazine called Uyir, which features stunning photography of mundane urban nature, and other books, often Tamil translations of books on environmental politics from diverse languages.

Nithya holds a master’s degree in anthropology and works as a part of research teams at the French Institute of Pondicherry. Her research focuses on coastal communities, gender and the livelihoods of fishers.