Our Story
Our Story
I'm first-generation Bangladeshi, raised in Texas. Which meant I spent my whole childhood translating between two worlds and didn't realize I was doing it until much later.
Two things did the raising.
I'm first-generation Bangladeshi, raised in Texas. Which meant I spent my whole childhood translating between two worlds, and didn't realize I was doing it until much later.
Two things did the raising.
The first was my mother's kitchen. She made desserts that took hours and a level of precision, and she did it like it was nothing. The roshmolai I asked for every Eid took two days, and there wasn't a step in it you could rush. It took me years to understand what else those desserts were doing. They were memory. Cultural preservation. They were keeping a place alive that she'd left 7,000 miles behind. Most people don't think of that as a luxury. It is. South Asian parents who immigrated in the '80s don't always say the thing out loud. Love shows up as a sweet placed in your hands, cavity-inducing and non-negotiable. That's what pulled me into following her.
The first was my mother's kitchen.She made desserts that took hours and a level of precision, like it was nothing. The roshmolai I asked for every Eid took two days, and not a step in it could be rushed. It took me years to understand what else those desserts were doing. They were memory. Cultural preservation. Keeping alive a place she'd left 7,000 miles behind. Most people don't think of that as a luxury. It is. South Asian parents who immigrated in the '80s don't always say the thing out loud. Love shows up as a sweet placed in your hands, cavity-inducing and non-negotiable. That's what pulled me in behind her.
The second was a speaker. Every genre came through the house. Rap, country, Bollywood, whatever was on (respectfully, no metal or screamo). 90s and 2000s hip hop and R&B is where I landed, and where I still live. Shoutout to the Millennium Tour where I cried the entire time, because that wasn't a concert, that was my soul on stage.
The second was a speaker. Every genre came through the house — rap, country, Bollywood, whatever was on (respectfully, no metal or screamo). 90s and 2000s hip hop and R&B is where I landed, and where I still live (shoutout to the Millennium Tour, where I cried the entire time, because that wasn't a concert, that was my soul on stage).
The older I got, the more I wanted to sit inside the Bengali half of it. A language people died to keep in print, and a war that turned it into a country in 1971. A culture that never says a feeling directly and never has to. Then you look up and every culture is running its own version of the same thing. Same same but different. That's the part that makes 7,000 miles feel like nothing, even when the politics and the geography insist otherwise.
The older I got, the more I wanted to sit inside the Bengali half of it. A language people died to keep in print, and a war that turned it into a country in 1971. A culture that never says a feeling directly and never has to. Then you look up and every culture is running its own version of the same thing. That's the part that makes 7,000 miles feel like nothing, even when the politics and the geography insist otherwise.
Baking came back to me during COVID. Living alone coupled with being hollowed out by ten-plus years of 60-hour weeks in tech and days of small talk on Zoom, I found something steady in the science and the ritual of it. Handing desserts to loved ones became how I said what I couldn't. I bake to express where words lose me.
Baking came back to me during COVID. Living alone, hollowed out by ten-plus years of 60-hour weeks in tech and days of small talk on Zoom, I found something steady in the science and the ritual of it. Handing desserts to loved ones became how I said what I couldn't. I bake to express where words lose me.
Studio 1971 is that, made into something you can hold. A kitchen run like a recording studio. Cookies and a curated playlist, one volume at a time, fixed boxes, no restocks.
The first volume is me finding out how my love language lands with people who don't know me.
An invitation into my world: grab a bite, let the music play, and shimmy your shoulders a little while you're here.
Meet me at the studio.
Studio 1971 is that, made into something you can hold. A kitchen run like a recording studio.
The first volume is me finding out how my love language lands with people who don't know me.
An invitation into my world: grab a bite, let the music play, shimmy your shoulders a little while you're here.
Meet me at the studio.
FUGEES
THE SCORE
FUGEES
THE SCORE
MASTER D
JIBON
ANIK KHAN
KITES
MONIR KHAN
HRIDOYER KOTHA