arkings Publishing has grand designs. They don’t hold a traditional text-heavy and a dense port-folio. While they can and have pub-lished books in traditional format, they have done a great deal more.

Markings, founded by Kiran Aman, understands that we now live in a time of memes, visual design, and social media.

To that end, the latest release by Markings Publishing, One Teaspoon of Home by author Noor Ali also follows a non-linear format. It features poems on desi food but is paired with brilliant illustrations and poetry instead of recipes. It is, however, an important book of poetry because it caters to a subject which is perhaps the most important part of our culture. Everyone enjoys food, whether it is home-cooked or ordered at a restaurant.

However, don’t think of it as a typical book on food. The poems feel personal, poignant and are embedded with social commentary, a sense of quirki-ness, and desi delights backed by knowledge.

It is an emblem of the pulse of this nation which enjoys eating, and a note on the most common experience of all manners of folks. No matter who you are and what you do, food is a part of daily life and more often than not, a night out also means hanging out at an eatery, depending on your budget or ordering in.

So, writing a book on desi food poetry is an interesting idea for the author to have delved into.

This and a lot more is clear with One Teaspoon of Home by author Noor Ali.

When they say, never judge a book by its cover, it is certainly a truism but one that this desi poetry book doesn’t need. From the illustrations by Umme Aimen Kazmi (@quirky_kahaniyaan) on the cover of a teacup held by a woman, it is instantly an arresting visual.

Both design and poems work in tandem and make sense while app-ealing to aesthetics that are beautiful but not inexplicable.

Take for example, just this poem on biryani:

“Is a cross-border identity crisis/forever jumping multiplicities/forever intersectional/Sindhi/Bombay/Malay.

Who would have thought that potatoes, lemons, cilantro would participate in warfare while und-erground spices provide oral obst-acles to quick consumption?”

In a single poem on biryani, the writer has forced us to think about the history of biryani, where it comes from, the various recipes (such as Bombay/Sindhi/ Malay) as well as the role it has played in shaping our culinary and social identity. This book is nostalgic but it also plays with the present.

The credit belongs to a num-ber of people. Beginning with author Noor Ali, who is an ass-istant professor at North-eastern University, it also be-longs to the illustrator Umme Aimen Kazmi (@quirky_kahaniyaan) and Mar-kings publishing for releasing it.

For the author, who is based in Boston, this desi poetry book is her “ode to her homeland” and when we speak of this home-land, this quirky, playful and social commentary on desi food, embedded with larger context, it does take on a larger meaning.

Kudos to the author, illus-trator and Markings Publi-shing for once again proving that they are willing to work with writers and illustrators to create unusual, almost anomalous work, never seen or read in Pakistan before they came into existence – unless it is from a foreign publisher.

– Watch out for a conversation with the founder of Markings Publishing next week.