Put your hands together for the cheeriest gift of the season — the inaugural edition of Pudding, an anthology uniquely mirroring the suburb we all love

Shormistha Mukherjee with the first copy of Pudding. PIC/HUZEFA ROOWALA

Stories beget stories. This is ringingly true of Shormistha Mukherjee’s hot-from-the-oven Pudding — an anthology on Bandra, by Bandra, but for Bandra and far beyond. Lovingly baked layer upon layer with insightful perspectives and delightful first-person narratives centred on the history of the growth of the tiny seaside hamlets that collectively created the Queen of the Suburbs, the first of this annual volume is out next week. 

Sitting between stories of joy and loss, Pudding organically flows from media professional Mukherjee’s Memory Keepers of Bandra series on Substack. Realising there are several residents (like her) who set up home here later in life, Mukherjee takes care to have different essays describe why this suburb is a place where everyone feels they somehow fit in. “I want this book to be something they read as well, and sort of grow roots with,” she says. 

Mukherjee wishes we return next year for flavourful second helpings. Before offering Bandra on a plate, she says, “Pudding is self-made and scrappy. It’s made with jugaad, and favours, and help and a whole village backing it.” Arrestingly designed by Gary Curzai, the introductory Pudding, in the words of its curator-editor, “with its sweet bits and its burnt bits, is now yours to love”.

How was the idea of Pudding seeded? 
SM: Sometime in June this year. I was already observing and documenting my neighbourhood of Bandra on Instagram, via the handle Houses of Bandra. I got frustrated because I couldn’t tell long-form stories on that platform. So, Memory Keepers of Bandra was born on Substack. Then I thought there has to be a way for people to read these stories without having to click a link. I loved the idea of a brilliantly designed book, almost like a magazine. With stories of Bandra geography, history, sport, food, nature, music and, of course, people. With not just my voice. I wanted lots of voices to bring alive all these topics and reasons why we love Bandra.

Why name the anthology Pudding? 
SM: Pudding is like Bandra, how can you not love it? A

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