Remembering Jayasree………………

L.

Like almost everybody else, some part of my day follows a regular routine. I’m not much of an early morning person but I’m up by 5:30 am on school days. Actually, I’m up at that time on most days as my husband is an early riser and our 7 month old pup, Fudge, enjoys his morning walk better if he gets it before it gets warm outside.

The 12th of October was a school day and started out pretty much the same as always. I had sent Akshaya off to school with her lunch and should have been checking my e-mail, logging into Facebook and such stuff, before breakfast like I usually do. As there was some other work I needed to get done before breakfast that morning, I decided to postpone checking my mail.

That’s when I got a call from Harini that pretty much shook me up. She had just got to know Jayasree had passed away early that morning, and not believing what she had heard, had called me to know if I knew about this. I couldn’t quite believe what I was hearing as I knew she was doing just fine a few days before this. It seems she was suddenly taken ill with pneumonia and the doctors couldn’t save her.

(Image source: Lata Raja)

For all of you who didn’t know Jayasree, she blogged about vegetarian food at Experiments In Kailas Kitchen (Kailas is the name of their home at Palakkad in Kerala). I first came across her blog a couple of years ago when I was searching for food blogs that posted my traditional Palakkad Iyer cuisine. I wrote to her and we exchanged e-mails. I also met her and family on one of our trips to Palakkad to visit family and my parents who then lived there. Turns out that would be our only meeting, though we had since been in touch on and off till recently.

I am finding it difficult to write about her in the past tense. I am also not very good with words, even more so in a situation like this……

She was a very warm, much talented and generous person. What I most remember most about her is her smile and that’s the memory of her I will always carry with me. It doesn’t seem right that she is no longer with us, but we have little control over destiny and can do no more than accept that which we cannot change. It is said that God loves more those who die young, and may it be so.

Lata, Harini (who both knew her well) and I wanted to do something to honour her memory. Given that we are separated by distance, it seemed nothing could be a greater tribute to Jayasree than celebrating her love for food and blogging. As we were discussing the best way to go about this, we also got responses from others in the blogging community saying they wanted to join us in remembering **Jayasree.

(Jayasree’s No-Bake Chocolate Pinwheels)

So this is what we thought was the best thing to do and we are appealing to all of you in the food blogging community (in India and the rest of the world) to join us in this effort.

We’re also calling non-bloggers who either followed her blog or knew her in some way to please join us in this tribute to Jayasree.

We’re hoping as many of you as possible will join us all in showing our support for her and her family when they need it the most.

Please visit Jayasree’s blog, Experiments In Kailas Kitchen, and go through it.

Try one or more recipes from her blog and please post your photograph of it with the link to her original recipe on Jayasree’s Facebook page dedicated to her blog. To post on her Facebook page, all you have to do is to click on the “like” button first.

If you have a blog and would like to post about this please feel free to do so. This would help spread the word among your readers who might not know of this otherwise.

In your post please link ONLY to Jayasree’s recipe that you chose. Do not link to any of us. Also, please DO NOT reproduce or discuss her recipe in this particular post. Do feel free to share something about Jayasree if you wish, as that would be really nice.

It would be especially nice if we could all do this before the 12th of November, 2011 as this would be the first month anniversary of her demise.

Hoping to see your wholehearted support for Jayasree and her family. Thank you.