So far, 2022 has been an eventful year, with lots of highs and lows. One of the upcoming highs is getting to spend Pujo in Kolkata after a very long time. Pujo is a time of socialisation, of meeting up with friends. And in that spirit, I have a series of four rather special articles lined up this season. It features the works of seven people, ranging from essays to recipes, from digital art to photography. What ties them together is the underlying theme of jubilation, with a generous helping of nostalgia.

These seven people include people I’ve interacted with before: from Nodee di whose Baking 101 and Roast Dinner series have the touch of the expert home cook, to Souvik whose brilliant artwork has adorned a lot of my writings, from French pastry to Kolkata biryani. There is Neeladri, whose expert calligraphy added that perfect final touch to the biryani article from 2020’s Pujo, as well as Akash, whose pro-level photograph elevated my Mangsher jhol article from the Pujo of 2021. But wait, there’s more. 

For the first time, we have Bengali articles on this blog, two of them in fact, thanks to two people whose creative output has been amazing. There’s Prateeti Bandyopadhyay di, one half of the amazing duo behind Nola, the criminally underrated YouTube channel that keeps traditional Bengali cooking alive, whose amazing thumbnails illustrated my Machh series from last year’s Pujo. And finally, there is none other than Aneek Chakraborty da, whose amazing penmanship is no secret, as evidenced by a plethora of amazing essays that have been featured multiple times from the front page of Robibashoriyo in October 2015, and this year’s Sarodiya edition of Sananda.

I am grateful to have had so many people agree to enrich my blog with their amazing work. By the way, if you’re keeping count: the seventh on the list is none other than Manasij, whose dissertation-level discourse on cocktails has been a constant this year. For the first time, the usual narrative takes a break to make room for a rather special instalment of The Cocktail Chronicles, scheduled for tomorrow.

I hope you enjoy this rather special quartet of posts. And since you won’t be hearing directly from me until Pujo is over, here’s wishing all the readers of the Gourmet Glutton a very Happy Durga Puja, in advance!