By Sharanya Gopinathan
Bhuli, an Instagram page managed by Tanya Singh and Tanya Kotnala, is wowing viewers with its artwork that celebrates the art, culture, food and natural produce of Uttarakhand.
In a recent series that celebrated National Nutrition Week from September 1 to 7, Bhuli explored local fruits and vegetables through art, from the vitamin C-rich pomelo, to amaranth seeds to fiddlehead ferns. As Kotnala said to Scroll.in, you may not even find these foods in restaurants in Uttarakhand as they usually serve generic North Indian food, not local delicacies.
Everything about Bhuli is meant to celebrate Uttarakhand. Kotnala told us, “Bhuli [which means younger sister in Garhwali] initially was a pen name for me to display my illustrations about Indian arts and crafts. Around that time, I was working in textiles with the government in various rural clusters, from Madhya Pradesh to Uttarakhand, and got tired of the government mismanagement and chaos. So I decided to to convert Bhuli into a society.”
She’s joined by co-founder Tanya Singh, a nutritionist who was working on a breastfeeding campaign for the Ministry of Women Empowerment and Child Development, to launch Bhuli with the aim of showcasing Uttarakhand’s arts, crafts, food and culture. Kotnala says, “We’re currently working with a number of self help groups and artisan society across Uttarakhand to help them with product development and innovation.”
Clearly, the page highlights more than just food and produce: There’s a heavy focus on local textiles and weaving, and other forms of arts and crafts from the region. The illustrations themselves are done by Kotnala in the style of Aipan, the folk art of Uttarakhand.
You can check out the rest of their wonderful work here on Instagram.