Queens of the Everyday: A Visual Diary

On the 30th September, a cohort of inquisitive individuals started their journey together for Indus Conclave 2025’s micro-residency Street Foods: Queens of the Everyday, curated by interdisciplinary artist Nahla Tabaa. We packed ourselves inside a coaster and embarked on an adventure reminiscent of school days and field trips.

The brilliant Nahla Tabbaa led us through this journey, bringing in warmth and love, creating a safe place where we could share our feelings and ideas, while guiding us to be present and still. Giving the group exercises and writing prompts along the way. I found myself  thinking, contemplating, creating stories about the spaces I stood in while I  tasted everything around me.

It’s hard to put down this experience in words, as it was quite a sensorial: the spicy breezes coming from the samosas being fried, warm October air, an array of smells from fruit to dust. The olfactory senses were not the only ones being tickled: the colours of the jharokas and the bright fruit filled carts grabbed our attention, as we walked through the streets of Gawalmandi and Delhi Gate, sometimes in silence, sometimes in conversation as we observed our surroundings.

We adventured together collectively, creating visual and written narratives about the sounds, sights, smells and tastes all around us; we asked questions and looked for answers in between the doors and the winding streets. We visited a wide array of gastronomical establishments: old bakeries like the Punjab Bakery in Gawalmandi, the old tandoors and food vendors of the streets.

Taste, naturally, was the most activated sense during this time — we went around tasting all kinds of naan, khameeri roti, the famous round bakerkhani only found in the old city, Lahori fish, biscuits, kheer, mithay and persimmons.

During my walks through the streets I also experienced pockets of silence between the noise and the buzzing streets. I spent my residency collecting photographs and sounds, quietly asking the streets for messages, asking questions of their past and future. Researching the food we ate and their journey to these streets and talking to the locals who lived there sometimes left me overwhelmed with emotion. I was transported back to memories of the spice bazaar in Akbari Mandi and the Pfaff sewing machine shop, remembering trips I took with my Nano to get her sewing machine repaired; and how after that we ate keemay walay naan at Khalifa Naan.

These streets hold so many memories, memories of smell, memories of taste.

In the end, on 5th October, we came together at Alhamra, at the Indus Conclave 2025, to create a soundscape Dastarkhwan — collective drawing where we let the sounds of streets move us around the pieces of paper with colours and charcoal — and brought together a map, an edible landscape of our personal journeys through the old city of Lahore, while we offered bits of what we tasted along the way.