Sumaiya Mustafa

The Tamil side of the internet has been depressing me since May 4. Neurotically holding on to it because letting it go offline is also giving anxieties. Congratulations to the majority that believed in change. Condolences to the rest who were wise enough to be in the know that the said “change” is only as good as the pathetic novelty of carrot-sprinkled idlis on a complimentary breakfast menu.

“Tearing up a hot parotta between your palms and dissolving its gluten in a runny-grainy salna first on a banana leaf/plate, then in your mouth is a social etiquette you pick early on from the small-town and village bazaars of south Tamil Nadu. The sight of men standing sweat-pasted to their inner garments and dark-coloured sarongs hanging folded below their torso, hands kneading the dough, making parottas swinging their arms high in the air holding the dough in four fingers is a culture that is partly visual and mostly culinary.“ Read more about the origins of parotta, the aftermath of introduction of wheat and the stories all the flaky layers of a parotta holds. 🔗 Link in bio to read the full newsletter Words: Sumaiya Mustafa ( @readingtv ) Design: @dhoopstudios ( @rinisinghi + @comicluster )

Bison Kaalamaadan (2025), directed by Mari Selvaraj, is a biographical sports drama based on the life of Manathi Ganesan. Moving beyond the spectacle of kabaddi, the film foregrounds Dalit experiences in sport and the fragility of caste tensions among non-Brahmin groups. In the first part of this two-part essay, Sumaiya Mustafa highlights how landscape and caste inform the protagonist's kabaddi journey, and unpacks the many complex layers that underlie the film's commentary on regional dynamics and caste mobility. You can read the essay on the app as well as the website. Link in bio! Image Credits: All images are stills from Bison Kaalamaadan (2025) by Mari Selvaraj. Images courtesy of the director. The editorial work at ASAP | art is supported by The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts. Keywords: Moving Images/Film, Resistance, Labour, #asap #asapart #alkazifoundation

How might photography reshape our understanding of everyday lives and inequalities? Join us for our upcoming Impart Dialogue with photographer M Palani Kumar (@chempkumar ) and writer Sumaiya Mustafa (@readingtv ) as they reflect on how image-making can enable greater visibility for marginalised voices. Rooted in long-term engagement with working-class communities in Tamil Nadu, Kumar’s practice moves beyond observation into sustained participation, where photography becomes both record and responsibility. In this conversation, he considers the ethical and political stakes of representation today: what it means to look closely, remain accountable to what is seen, and to make images that do not simply document, but return us to the world differently. This online discussion will be held on 30 April 2026 at 7:30 PM (IST) via Zoom. Register now through the link in our bio. This event is a part of Impart Dialogues (formerly MAP Academy Live) — a series of expert-led talks, conversations, panels and exhibition walkthroughs organised exclusively for our online community. About the Speakers M Palani Kumar is a photojournalist with the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) and the founder of the People’s Photographers Collective, a forum of socially responsible photographers from working-class backgrounds. Kumar has worked as a cinematographer on Kakoos (Toilet), a documentary on the lives of manual scavengers in Tamil Nadu, and exhibited Naanum Oru Kuzhundhai (I Am a Child Too), a series of photographs documenting the children of sanitation workers. His accolades include the Ananda Vikatan Top Ten Humans Award (2019), the Dayanita Singh-PARI Documentary Photography Award (2022), and the ACJ Photojournalism Award (2025). Sumaiya Mustafa is a writer and researcher from Tamil Nadu whose work spans culinary ethnography, coastal cultures, film, and taste. Her writing has appeared in the Caravan, The Hindu, The Polis Project, and ASAP Connect, among other publications. A recipient of the Food Matters Grant, her work on visual representations of culture has been exhibited at the Serendipity Arts Festival (2025)

In this edition of Writer’s Pick—a segment where ASAP | art invites its writers to revisit the archive and curate selections that continue to resonate—Sumaiya Mustafa brings together pieces that engage with culinary histories, resistance to nuclear projects and the everyday material traces of marginalised lives. To read the pieces, click the link in our bio. ASAP | art’s editorial work is supported by the Alkazi Foundation for the Arts.

How might photography reshape our understanding of everyday lives and inequalities? Join us for our upcoming Impart Dialogue with photographer M Palani Kumar (@chempkumar ) and writer Sumaiya Mustafa (@readingtv ), as they reflect on how image-making can enable greater visibility for marginalised voices. Rooted in long-term engagement with working-class communities in Tamil Nadu, Kumar’s practice moves beyond observation into sustained participation, where photography becomes both record and responsibility. In this conversation, he considers the ethical and political stakes of representation today: what it means to look closely, remain accountable to what is seen, and to make images that do not simply document, but return us to the world differently. This online discussion will be held on 30 April 2026 at 7:30 PM (IST) via Zoom. Register now through the link in our bio. This event is part of Impart Dialogues (formerly MAP Academy Live) — a series of expert-led talks, conversations, panels and exhibition walkthroughs organised exclusively for our online community. About the Speakers M Palani Kumar is a photojournalist with the People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI) and the founder of the People’s Photographers Collective, a forum of socially responsible photographers from working-class backgrounds. Kumar has worked as a cinematographer on ‘Kakoos’ (Toilet), a documentary on the lives of manual scavengers in Tamil Nadu, and exhibited ‘Naanum Oru Kuzhundhai’ (I Am a Child Too), a series of photographs documenting the children of sanitation workers. His accolades include the Ananda Vikatan Top Ten Humans Award (2019), the Dayanita Singh-PARI Documentary Photography Award (2022), and the ACJ Photojournalism Award (2025). Sumaiya Mustafa is a writer and researcher from Tamil Nadu whose work spans culinary ethnography, coastal cultures, film, and taste. Her writing has appeared in the Caravan, The Hindu, The Polis Project, and ASAP Connect, among other publications. A recipient of the Food Matters Grant, her work on visual representations of culture has been exhibited at the Serendipity Arts Festival (2025).

Who hasn't written about you, dear mangoes, Writing this nevertheless  in my love's faith for you. You are godsend, Not because I've made my mind to turn my love for you as a unit to measure love itself, But because I think it's a consolation from the heavens for the creation of summers. -- sorry for the bad poem, mangoes dearests.

I watched this film Thaikizhavi (2026) because I wanted to decide that for myself after reading the internet’s mixed feelings. Then, I did not want to give that pseudo-feminist creation any attention after watching it. The Madurai aesthetic was macho-high, fair enough to roll your eyes. But I have specific reasons that made it an empty watch and loathing easy. I have to write this because some of my favourite film critics missed it too and my fingers are itchy when I see that pass around as a celebration of girl power.  Pavunuthai, the lead, is a perpetrator by all means. Her wealth is built on other people’s penury. In this scene where she polices a school girl in the bus for sitting with a male friend, about generations of inaccessibility to education for rural women, I saw caste-defenders cheering up even when I was watching it alone in my home. It addresses their anxieties about their girls' social circles. What exactly does Pavunuthai stand for here? Rural girls should be grateful for this opportunity to go to school, therefore keep away from friendships. Go, study, come back? Just when I thought I had something to appreciate when she arranges for her daughter’s remarriage, I saw my worst demon spirited: brothers rushing to perform “murai” for the groom. Murai is a curse that refuses to unstuck itself from Tamil culture where in the name of “happy” gifts to the married girls and their husbands’ families their natal family is drawn into a whirlpool of financial distress. This can’t be culture. It's a permit to perform vices in culture's name for this bizarre reason of birthing men.

Kochi as a carousel. I know no city like you that is so self-aware of itself.

Supported by the Serendipity Food Matters Grant (2024), Sumaiya Mustafa’s project Culinary Cosmopolitanism Through Parotta Shops of Rural and Coastal Tamil Nadu (2025), was presented at the tenth edition of the Serendipity Arts Festival 2025. In this edited conversation with Mallika Visvanathan, Mustafa reflects on the project’s conceptual grounding, the labour networks that shaped the spread of parotta eateries across rural and coastal Tamil Nadu and her research process. You can read the interview on the app as well as the website. Link in bio! Image credit: All images are from the project Culinary Cosmopolitanism Through Parotta Shops of Rural and Coastal Tamil Nadu (2025) by Sumaiya Mustafa, with photographs by Noor Nisha. Images courtesy of the artists. The editorial work at ASAP | art is supported by The Alkazi Foundation for the Arts. Keywords: Personal Narratives, Labour, Gender, Installation Art #asap #asapart #alkazifoundation

Meet our speaker: Sumaiya Mustafa A writer and culinary ethnographer, her work explores the connections between culture, taste, and visual storytelling. A 2024 Serendipity Arts Foundation Food Matters Grant recipient, she brings nuanced perspectives on food as lived experience and memory. Book your tickets now and join us at Kulam✨ [ Kulam Festival, Food culture, Culinary heritage, Food stories, Community gathering, Cultural conversations, Food and memory, Storytelling through food, Cultural festival, Food traditions, Kochi events, Fort Kochi community, Kochi art scene, Things to do in Kochi, The Art Outreach Society ]

There is nothing much to guess about this image. Bought from a man who came “Poli…thenga poli…” with a bucket of it covered over cut sheets of old newspapers. It was modestly filled and that suited my full stomach that day. Again, there isn't a thing about it to guess afresh. Coconut, jaggery, hints of cardamom, and the goodness of carbs.  Then, it was eaten sitting in the alerting smell of urine. I doubt if any of us can recognise a train in front of us in our country without its stench, sorry smell.  It's your olfactory cue to rush, get inside, check if your bags are with you, before it pulls away. We travel, chat, and eat the things that come and go across the aisle. That’s not even feigning normalcy because two stations into the journey, discomfort flies out of the window. It's like the character that non-fiction writers introduce first to initiate a thought and as the story progresses you leave the character just there from where it began.