This is the book you’ll want to gift yourself.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the importance of rituals—how they center us, connect us to our roots, and play a profound role in healing from trauma and supporting self-care. Rituals invite us to slow down in an age when everything moves too fast.
I recently attended an intimate event in New York City featuring Nethra Gomatheswaran, a local designer whose recent book Love, Paati (which translates to “Love, Grandma” in Tamil) beautifully encapsulates the idea of rituals. It features a collection of time-honored beauty and wellness traditions alongside lush, vibrant photography.
Nethra explained that growing up in India instilled a deep appreciation for natural beauty, wellness, fine arts, fashion, and textiles. Her great-grandmother was a major influence. The matriarch of the family, she was covered in tattoos and brimming with knowledge of holistic remedies and natural beauty rituals.
According to Nethra, this incredible woman always shared advice with neighbors and visitors, helping them find relief from common ailments with simple, natural ingredients.
Her great-grandmother’s guiding principle was, “If you can’t put it in your body, you can’t put it on your body.”
In her twenties Nethra realized she wanted to document these rituals. Her great-grandmother had passed away, and much of her wisdom began to fade as oral traditions struggled to survive. So, she began gathering information from her grandmother and mother. In the process, Nethra captured stories, rituals, and practices before they disappeared entirely. By doing so, she’s bridged the gap between old and new, personal and universal.
Nethra shared many reasons for writing this book, including one time at a cafe on the Upper East Side when a friend told her about the “new golden latte” and how good it was for you.
“I was like, are you serious? And that’s when I realized. People were talking so much about the benefits of this ritual. They weren’t talking about where it was from. They weren’t talking about how long this has been around for. It was completely out of context. And that’s when I realized that I wanted to find a way to share all of these rituals authentically so they don’t get reduced to being just another beauty trend.” Nethra shared.
Love, Paati offers a tapestry of traditions from different parts of India and diverse skin tones, hair textures, and environments, all visually documented to show that beauty is not a singular narrative. The rituals are inclusive, communal, and transcends gender, age, and background—cousins, grandparents, and neighbors all participating in seasonal detoxes or simple spa-like treatments, bonding over the shared experience.
The book also emphasizes the interconnectedness of food and beauty. Many everyday foods—coffee, avocado, orange juice—are used as topical treatments. This dual approach to wellness is something our ancestors instinctively understood, but we often forget in the era of commercialized products and complicated ingredient lists.
Love, Paati is part memoir, cultural archive, and wellness guide. It challenges the idea that we must look outside ourselves—or our kitchens—for solutions to self-care. It offers simple practices that can help restore balance, honor heritage, and bring peace to our minds and bodies.
–Katya Moorman
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