The Eighth One: Shibani Murlidhar
Blackbird singing in the dead of night
Take these broken wings and learn to fly
All your life
You were only waiting for this moment to arise
- The Beatles
"I suffer major self doubt".
I heard that and I knew that this was going to be a refreshingly honest conversation with someone who is self-aware enough to recognize the feelings of insecurity that come from living a creative life, and brave enough to walk through them and still create what she loves to. Meet Shibani Murlidhar, co-owner of Nerlu cafe along with my first firefly guest Rajiv, baker, chef, ex-teacher, ex-educationalist, mother to two dogs and a not-so-little boy of 11 and by far, one of the most casually talented people I have ever met. By that I mean, she wears her talent lightly and I have been very curious to know the secret behind that lightness. So we sat down in her lovely home amongst her two dogs and chatted away for a few hours. The dogs are a whole political situation by themselves, but more on that later.
We start somewhere in the middle, with her latest project. About 4 months ago, she set up Nerlu cafe, a boutique multi-roaster coffee shop in Bangalore. She used to teach 4th grade children English in one of the international schools in Bangalore, spent a couple of years educating the educators and then decided to take a break. Starting a coffee shop during a break? How did it all happen I ask. Casually it sounds like. A coffee shop wasn't on her bucket list, she hadn't even been thinking about it, and she certainly hadn't imagined a partnership with anyone as opposite to her as Rajiv. They have been friends for more than 20 years and she tells me that if anyone had told either of them even a couple of years ago that they would be running a coffee shop together, they both would have laughed their heads off. Well, neither of them is laughing now, in fact they are celebrating as Nerlu hits 4 months and is growing in popularity everyday.
Back to how it started. A casual Saturday afternoon, a craving for a good cup of coffee, walking into a couple of them in the neighbourhood and noticing a few key things that give you a sense of what is important to her.
"I walked into this cafe and suddenly found myself conscious of what I was wearing, how I was looking. And I thought, what an awful feeling. It was the opposite of welcoming. And plus the coffee was bad."
She called Rajiv and rued about the fact that she couldn't find a good cup of coffee and said, "Wouldn't it be cool to say that we ran a coffee shop for a few years?" Rajiv agreed. And that is literally how the idea of Nerlu was born.
I dug a little deeper on the creative partnership. How does one work with someone diametrically opposite to you? How does an unlikely combination create something together? She reveals her own journey with the idea of teams,
"I have come to realize the power of teams. We always think we want to work with similar people, but it is actually in the space of the differences that the magic happens.'
"We got in with the best of intentions and it has just worked out."
Luckily for us who get to sample some of the finest coffees from India, in Bangalore and some of the most delicious cafe food too. But I have to be honest, I can't do justice to her craft with mere words and even pictures but given that it's the only way I know how, I am going to try.
For lunch, she made a butternut squash ravioli with a toasted hazelnut, sage and brown butter sauce. And a smoked chicken salad. The pasta was made from scratch using a 42 year old pasta making machine handed down to her by her mother, bought even before she was born. Hand rolled mind you. I am not kidding when I say that I am still thinking about that ravioli and those hazelnuts.
This ravioli is famous, at least amongst family and friends. During the pandemic she had started making and selling ravioli and her small food business, called Salt water had a number of takers as I can imagine.
She has also had other small food businesses. With Sweet Salt, she made cookies. Then there was Sunshine granola. But her grandest food project so far has been Nerlu. I have lots of pictures of the food from there, but patience people. Before asking her how it all began, I just wanted to get a sense of her method. Before the chat, she had been telling me for weeks that she doesn't really have a process. And that is exactly where her magic lies.
She loves to cook more than she likes to eat. She has never learnt how to cook formally or informally. And she has never bought a recipe book in her life. She just knows how to cook, apparently. I am envious as hell. Setting envy aside, I ask her about her earliest memories around cooking. It was a brownie recipe, she recollects, given to her by an aunt that she learnt by heart. But she confesses, recipes aren't really her thing.
"I have a recipe problem. I can't follow them. I may read 5-6 recipes just to get an idea but then I do my own thing."
Gifted, clearly. She tells me she doesn't really see herself as someone very detail oriented, which I find hard to believe. Hence, the nonchalant shrug on recipes. If the recipe says 1/3rd cup of milk, she winks and pours in something that looks like, just maybe, around 1/3rd cup. Cheeky, I think, in a way I love. Nothing she cooks ever tastes the same, but each time she will probably have you licking your fingers, eyes shut, making orgasmic sounds, taking in the flavour, the textures and the deliciousness. She slows you down, just for that moment. The ravioli made me want to hug her, just like the time Rajiv did when he tasted the pumpkin soup she had made at the cafe. Her food has a way of making your senses come alive, but they never shock your system, just gently and slowly make your insides smile.
Behind all that natural talent lies a delightfully real person. She is clumsy and she owns it. While making the ravioli, she spilled coffee, apparently, and laughed it off. Far cry from the tears that spilled out when she broke a baked dish, two weeks into her marriage, eons ago. She thinks her food is ugly so she doesn't take pictures of them. She doesn't like to bake anything too fancy, so none of those complicated desserts for her, she loves tea cakes instead. She isn't a big plater. "I eat with my mouth", she grins. I asked her what her biggest inspiration for food was, and she quite simply said, "Craving."
"Rustic home style cooking is what I like to eat, and it is what I like to make."
I ask her when she really started cooking for other people. And she tells me of her years in Spain. She shared a house a few Swedish girls who lived on apples apparently, much to Shibani's horror. She proceeded to tell them that she would be cooking breakfast, lunch and dinner and I was like jeez, how lucky did those girls get! She remembers baingan ka bharta being a favourite and rolling parathas with bottles. She earned the reputation of being that person- "If you are Shibani's friend, you will get fed." Clearly those girls were busy eating coz no one took pictures of those early years of Shibani cooking. But she does have some pictures to share of her time there.
Wait, what was she doing in Spain anyways? More on that later. I don't want to stop talking about the food just yet.
I wanted to know more about her childhood influences. She grew up in Nigeria and a boarding school in Kodaikanal and her mother was a huge influence on her relationship with food. She is an excellent cook and some of those genes have been naturally passed on. Shibani loves cooking for friends and family, especially her husband and son. They are absolute foodies and more importantly, are hugely appreciative of everything she makes,
"The cook needs to be complimented", she smiles.
Growing up, she says, they took her mother's cooking for granted and never really gushed over her. Her husband came in and changed all that. He introduced the concept of "Superb Sambhar", which sounded so endearing. They basically pipe up and compliment even the most basic of dishes which makes the chef glow with pride. It made me think of the expectant look my mother has every time I try something she makes. A small grimace on my face and she is crestfallen. Note to self- compliment the cook more!
She tells me her son is a complete foodie and will eat anything. Well, why wouldn't he be. Check out the spread she laid out on his third birthday, including the cute K shaped cookies for little Kabir!
Like I said, who wouldn't turn into a foodie?
I ask her about the relationship between her emotional life and cooking. She tells me that she finds being in the kitchen most relaxing. She thinks it sounds old fashioned to say something like but you can tell, that it really is her safe space. Baking is her go-to when she is stressed out. And she has a stocked larder that she digs into every time she needs to let some steam off.
"Some people go to the gym when they are stressed, I bake a large cake."
If I wasn't trying to live sugar free, I would be hanging around her during her stressful times just to make sure I get a slice or two. And of course I would try and help her through the stress. Yes, yes, I would!
What are her pain points, her insecurities around her craft?
"I am not very good at far fetched, innovative flavour combinations. I love playing with textures and my food always tends to have textural variety. But I want to get better at flavours."
She tells me it is her biggest insecurity with food. She knows how to balance flavours but those wild innovative combinations is still something she has to master. I admire the humility to accept the insecurity, be able to voice it and quite simply know that one can always get better at some aspects of your craft.
Before we get to the cafe, there is a whole part of her life that I want to know more about. She used to be a 4th grade English teacher. In fact, that was the career she chose for herself, never imagining that she would ever get into the food business at all. Life has always been accidental she tells me. After studying at JNU, she went to Spain to do her masters in languages and literature. But why Spain? She took a long pause and very dramatically reveals,
"I went through a long and painful phase of Marquez."
Haha, really? She shakes her head and says she was obsessed. She wrote a paper on magical realism, and nearly did her PhD in comparative literature but wasn't sure she had enough of an academic disposition for a PhD on the subject . She eventually came back to India and became a 4th grade teacher. She started with taking Spanish and English lessons, but eventually focussed on English. Her mother was an art teacher and it seem to come naturally to her too. It's clear that it was something that she absolutely loved to do, for the right reasons,
"There is no job quite like teaching. If you are genuinely interested in kids and their growth, it's extremely gratifying."
She isn't just interested in children, she is a passionate advocate for their learning, their autonomy and is acutely sensitive to their needs, especially the ones who struggle. Her years of teaching have made her aware of the diversity that exists amongst children and knows that one shoe cannot fit everyone. She finds that children today aren't being exposed to enough failure. That is quite radical, I thought. She wisely observes.
"The more you fail, the stronger you become. Constant success is not the path to happiness."
She rues the state of the elite education system in India and is disillusioned enough not to want to go back to it.She doesn't want to be part of a system that is so academic. She rightly believes that children need to have a more well rounded education beyond grades and for now is focussed on ensuring that for her son. So after more than a decade of working in the system, she decided to take a break. And mulled over some ideas on what she would do next.
She describes herself as a restless person and sitting at home doing nothing was never going to be an option. One of the ideas she had was to start a writer's workshop for children because at the heart of it, what she really enjoys is teaching writing. In a lovely insight she tells me,
"Even before kids can write, they can tell stories. You teach kids to think like writers. Writers get inspiration, through the things they see, hear. experience. And you just teach children to observe the same."
One of the tools she has in mind are mentor's texts. She has a mini obsession and a huge collection of delightful children's books. She brought them out to show me and for me to borrow.
And as she went through her favourites, she told me of all the ways that she would teach writing to the little humans. Analysing a picture in a book and asking them to describe what was happening, crafting long and short sentences, even encouraging imitation because you can start with that before you discover your own voice, and then learning how to share and take peer feedback.
"Imagine how proud the children would be of their work. That's how you build autonomy."
This is the same autonomy she is trying to instil in her own son. I met him briefly and at 11 he runs regularly with his Dad, is already cruising through 10k marathons, and struck me as quite an independent young man. He came home from school and true to foodie form, went straight for the tres leches dessert that she had made. Incidentally the tres leches was also what I just couldn't say no to. I took a brief break from being sugar free and all of it was over Shibani's food. So worth it!
I digress. Does she see herself going back to teaching at some point, I ask. She tells me that she seems to have switched off from that life and for now the focus is the cafe. But there are still joys from that phase of her life. Recently, a few parents of her old students decided to surprise the kids and took them to the cafe. When they saw her, there was a lot of yelling and screeching I hear. And seeing Shibani grin ear to ear was enough to tell me that she will always have that special connection with the kids she has made a difference to.
I promised you pictures of her food from the cafe. But before that I ask her about the transition between cooking at home and managing food for a cafe. Huge difference she says. At home, being recipe free and instinctive works like a charm.
But managing the cafe is a whole different deal. There are issues of consistency, shelf life, wastage in the kitchen, and even employee morale. The menu itself is on a journey. The first menu they designed is vastly different from what they serve today and is likely to keep evolving as she learns on the job, listening to customers, taking feedback from fans of the cafe and watching the sales figures!
For the food, her vision is simple. She is clear that the coffee is the hero, and she wants to create food that doesn't get in the way of those taste buds. So no heavy dairy products that coat the mouth and don't let you really taste the beverage. She is making sure that there are enough familiar items on the menu that people want to eat. She doesn't want a pizza and pasta place, instead the vibe is more soup and salad.
"The challenge has been to make the food feel like restaurant food without feeling rich. And nor do I want it to feel home-made. So there are secret ingredients, a home styled bakery and just food that goes well with coffee."
If you are in Bangalore and haven't been to Nerlu yet, here are some pictures of the food. You may call me biased because it is my favourite cafe in Bangalore and these are my friends, but go eat the food, have the coffee and then we'll talk.
The food is excellent no doubt. But it is infused with a warmth that I can only attribute to Shibani's energy. She genuinely loves feeding people, loves chatting with her customers, she cares about your experience and most importantly, she wants you to feel welcome. Her lived experience of walking into a space where it didn't feel like that has stayed with her. And she goes out of her way to make sure you don't feel the same. And that isn't just restricted to the cafe, it's the same vibe when you walk into her home.
I told you about the political situation with her dogs. Jojo is the friendly one and I was told not to make eye contact with Yoda. There is a sequence in which the dogs are brought out to meet the guests as there are some minor rivalry issues and Jojo doesn't like the attention Yoda gets. They have a whole instagram page dedicated to their antics, and I would highly recommend following them. They were adorable and an intrinsic part of Shibani's world. After jumping around a fair bit, they passed out to the sounds of us chatting.
Shibani's creative energy has a nonchalance that I loved. She is completely oblivious to how talented she really is. She knows her insecurities, can talk about them honestly, laugh at herself and create through all that. Also her creativity isn't about herself, it is about what she brings to the table for everyone else, be it the friends and family she cooks for, her customers, her staff, and the children she has taught. She brings an enormous amount of warmth and a nurturing energy that you just want to be around. If you don't believe me, walk into Nerlu and ask for Shibani, and call me after.
I asked her to choose a song for herself and after some consultation with her son she zeroed in on a Beatles favourite. Blackbird. Have a listen here:
There was so much we chatted about that I can't print here and this was one of those few firefly chats that felt like I was being interviewed too. We discovered connections, shared insights, confidences and a common love for silver jewellery. I left feeling like I had been welcomed, nurtured with food and warmth, and stimulated by an intellect that dug far deeper than what meets the eye. That is Shibani for you.
Follow Nerlu at:
https://www.instagram.com/nerlucafe/
And meet Jojo and Yoda here:
https://www.instagram.com/jojo_yoda/
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