A life well lived

Jyoti was born on 24 October 1950 in Kitale, in the Rift Valley of Kenya — a town of red earth roads and wide skies, where the Indian community she grew up in carried the tastes and traditions of Gujarat thousands of miles from their origin.

She trained as a nurse, a profession that spoke to the core of who she was: practical, caring, and quietly capable. She brought that same steadiness to her kitchen.

Her cooking

Jyoti's food was rooted in the Gujarati tradition — patient, spiced with precision, and made without shortcuts. She cooked from memory, rarely from a book, which makes the three notebooks she left behind all the more precious.

Every celebration, every gathering, every ordinary Tuesday had something of hers at the centre of it. The smell of her kitchen is something the family carries still.

Her journey

• 1950 — Born in Kitale, Kenya
• [ ] — Trained as a nurse add detail
• [ ] — Add life events here
• [ ] — Her marriage, children, where she settled
• 2021 — Passed away, 11 April 2021