On her dining table, on a round wooden platter, Shubhra lays out the ingredients for the dish that is to be the hero of the meal. Dudhyachi Bhaji Uss Ghalun is a simple stir-fry of pumpkin, sugarcane, coconut, and hog plum. “I learned this from my mother-in-law, my Aai,” she says. Anyone who meets Shubhra immediately learns two things about her: she loves feeding people, and she owes much of her cooking prowess to her mother-in-law. “What I am today is mainly because of her. My mother gave me birth, but she nurtured me. She taught me how to buy fish, how to cook it, and which ingredient to focus on.”

Much of these teachings come to the fore at Aai’s, her home catering and cooking venture. Shubhra launched Aai’s in 2017 for her mother who wanted more pocket-money. “I told her instead of making and distributing pickles to everyone, let’s sell them,” she says. The pickles did well, and they graduated to taking orders, and sending out tiffins. But shortly after, her mother gave up. “I think she couldn’t handle the pressure.”

By that time, a married Shubhra was already cooking for her family and improving her skills under her mother-in-law, Saroj Shankwalker’s tutelage. “She encouraged me to keep going with Aai’s. I will teach you.” And Shubhra did, forgoing a career in graphic designing to cook full-time.

Aai’s focuses on the food of her community, the Gaud Saraswat Brahmins. One of the largest Hindu communities in the state, their food is often mistakenly lumped under ‘Goan Hindu food’. As part of Aai’s, she crafts a luxurious sit-down lunch at her in-laws’ farm in Camurlim, a small village in the north of Goa.

There’s a slight quiver to Shubhra’s voice as she talks about her Aai, who passed away in 2023. The last few years have been filled with losses: both her mothers, her dog, and a neighbour whose house she grew up in, and whom she affectionately called Mami.

Through it all, Shubhra has continued cooking.

Today, the name Aai’s encapsulates both the women she considers her mothers, and whose photos adorn a shelf at her flat’s entrance. “They are my inspiration,” she says.

Perhaps the best way she is immortalising them is through her food.

Beyond Aai’s, Shubhra is collating recipes — a practice she started in 2003 — and hopes to put them together in a book. Written in a neat scrawl, Shubra’s recipes are a document of all that she has learned and wishes to pass on to her daughter. There are notes, handy hints and surprisingly, no measurements. “I didn’t learn to cook with measurements. Aai would say things like one muth (approx. handful) and that was it,” she says.