Growing up, no one said “I love you.” Instead you got asked “Saaptacha?” Across phone calls and messages, the questions keep coming: What’s for lunch? What’s for dinner? Saaptacha? This is how we ask after each other.
Saaptacha? is a composite day in Lakshmi Iyer’s kitchen, from the first kaapi to the dinner plate. Each meal is a new phase, a new era: Amma’s letters from Madras, the long wait for two children, a family learning to cook its way into a new life. Twenty years of recipes, blog posts and letters become a single day of meals.
A memoir in meals about the love that gets served instead of spoken.
Questions readers ask
What does “Saaptacha?” mean?
It is Tamil for “Did you eat?” In the house I grew up in, it was how love got vocalized.
Is it a cookbook?
No. It is a graphic memoir, a story told in illustrated pages. Six recipes from my old blog, A Reluctant Chef, close the six movements of the day.
Where do the words come from?
They are mine, lifted from twenty years of blog posts, essays and recipes, and from my mother’s letters. The back of the book lists every source.
How were the pictures made?
The pages were drawn with an AI image tool, working from my family photographs and my direction, and lettered in a font made from my own handwriting. The book says so in its colophon. More on how I work: How I make this.
Is it in colour?
Yes. The paperback is printed in full colour, and so is the Kindle edition, which reads best on a tablet or phone.
Paperback, full colour, 150 pages · Kindle · Independently published, 2026 · ISBN 979-8167607965 (paperback)
Also by Lakshmi Iyer
Pearls on Marble · A Star Keeps Its Distance · Hindsight · The Smudged Hyphen · Why Is My Skin Brown? · Why Is My Hair Curly?