Know your Food Bloggers: an Interview with Kamalika C
3:17 AM
As part of Kolkata food bloggers, we are now a days featuring one of our blogger members on an weekly basis. We started with Kamalika of Silence Sings. here is a small chitchat with her which will help you to know your favourite blogger in a different light. Hope you will enjoy this small interview.
Kamalika is my classmate and a childhood friend and I have known her for almost all my life. As both of us hail from the same place and had grown up with the same ideology so we have many things in common. She is very creative and hard working and her photographs are a drool worthy treat for any hungry soul. If you love easy and quick non veg bakes then her place is a must visit for you.
1. let us
know a brief about yourself.
Kamalika is a very creative person who runs her own designer boutique of exquisite handmade jewelries and crochet items side by side with a home-based baked items. She works as Freelance writer and translator (Bengali to English, English to Bengali), in which she mainly covers Book reviews, Food Product reviews, Restaurant Reviews and Photo Essays. Recently she has grown a keen interest towards Food Styling and Food Photography.
She is an alumni of Visva-Bharati, Santiniketan. She expresses her culinary thought, passion towards Photography and activities via her blog, Silence Sings with Kamalika C, where she shares her experiences in the kitchen and of her life.
2. how
did you get attracted to cooking and what was your first dish.
From
my childhood my sister and I were introduced by our parents with world
cuisines. We used to travel a lot and loved to venture out new dishes
of various forms of cuisines. My Dad is a great cook who is more
prone towards experimental cooking and my mom who is also an awesome
cook, always introduced us with the traditional form of cooking. And
we used to have a lot of parties at home where we had seen our
parents to cook and we too helped them. The cook- maids used to get a
total off-day. It is then I grew a strong attraction towards cooking.
Assisting parents in cooking are the real fun at the same time
created a strong bond with the food and me.
What
was my first dish, I hardly remember. What I really remembered that
My first whole lunch meal cooking experience that I wanted to
surprise my mom as the Cook was absent that day. I cooked Aloor Dum
(Bengali style Potato curry), Dal and Rice. But burnt my hand very
badly while straining the boiled rice and suffered a lot for a long
period.
3. who
has been your biggest influence.
My Father
and my mother.
4. How
did you start your blog.
After
stepping to USA I found life too boring. Far away from my near and dear
ones, the things I used to do were to cook, read and serf internet. One
day one of my very good friend suggested me to start a blog. And I
happily grabbed this opportunity and gave birth to my blog. After a
tough search and debating all alone I titled my blog "Silence
Sings with Kamalika C". For me every day I wake up with the
music of silence. She sings aloud to reach her voice to each and
every corner of the world. But nobody listens to the music of the
silence. Then I thought to bring out the music to share with the
world. A music, sometimes will be found very tuning and sometimes
totally tuneless. But that is the bitter truth when silence sings she
sings tunelessly tunefully. I started blogging by posting my
thoughts, my write ups etc. Then I never thought that I would be the
part of the food blogging world and acknowledge myself as a food
blogger.
From my
childhood I loved to cook and grew up with a keen interest in the
world of different cuisine. My Dad and Mom are the great cooks who
inspire me till date. Apart from them I used to read cook books and
never try to miss any cookery shows. After marriage I tried my
experimental culinary skill in full swing. I would like to thank my
husband who many a time get tortured by my terrible experimental
cooked dishes but never discouraged me. Every time I used to surprise
him with some new dishes and clicking the picture of it. One day I
posted one of my recipes on my blog. And then the journey just got
started. Slowly I grow up a passion towards food photography too. I
love contributing in my blog which is mainly based on food but it
actually reflects my mind, my thoughts and how I see the world. I
prefer to share the recipes which are very healthy and take very less
time to cook. The dishes come direct from my kitchen and all are
shared after tried and tasted.
5. which
aspect of food blogging you love the most.
Clicking
photographs and interacting with my readers.
6. Is
normal photography similar to food photography? share few of your
yips. how important for a blogger to interact with their readers? any
funny incident so far.
Absolutely
not. I found Food Photography the hardest job that I am still
learning everyday and experimenting with it.
I
am not that expert to give any tips. But I believe first you have to know your camera and the mode that you are comfortable with. And then
the lights and the angles. Once you have adapted them well then you
will learn very fast.
I
can't imagine my blog without my readers. They are the source of our
inspiration. We get praised and criticised as well. That actually
helps us to perform better and we learn a lot of things from our
readers too.
We
many a times face many funny comments from some of our readers too.
Once somebody commented seeing one of my Prawn dish pictures that the
prawns were not fried well. I got so surprised and angry how someone
from a picture assumed this and without tasting it commented like
this. Yes visual effect matters a lot I learned on that day.
7. what
are the things that you like and dislike about the food blogosphere
.
Once I
stepped in to this world I found myself drown in some thousands and
thousands of food blogs. Everyday, each blogger comes up with so many
innovative recipes. Everyday I learn so many things form them.
Mainly I become amazed by seeing the Food Photography practice that
most of the food bloggers concentrate whole heartedly. But at the
same time Food blogging has become so competitive that the essence of
true blogging is getting baffled. With all the positive sides it has
negative sides too. Many a times we find so many Food blogs that get
run only by copy pasting the pictures and recipes from other
bloggers.
8. where
do you see yourself in next 5 years.
I think I
will have more than 500 recipes in my Blog….I will start to click much
better Food Photographs than today. And some dreams are there, which
are always sweet when they are untold, unshared...
Hope you liked this small interview with Kamalika. Please go and visit her place and leave your valuable comments.
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3 comments
Straight from the heart. Nice knowing more about her :)
ReplyDeleteIt's always nice to know fellow blogger, nice to read the post.
ReplyDeletehi, am jasira,living in dubai. i decided to create FOOD BLOG. b i hav no idea. can u help me? pls
ReplyDelete