i’m a queer gujarati muslim land tender, medicine maker, and educator. i love taking complex ideas and distilling them into accessible learnings. my relationship with herbalism began in my mom’s kitchen. from a young age, i learned the secrets of medicinal formulation by taste-testing my way through her spice-layered dishes. I grew up in a household where food was medicine—where there was always a spice, a tea, or a remedy for every ailment. as i grew older, i naturally gravitated towards the health sciences in an attempt to deepen this knowledge i grew up around. after majoring in neurobiology at boston university on a pre-med track and spending my time interning with surgeons and researchers, i ultimately decided that western medicine was not the path for me. slowly, i found myself on a farm learning how to grow food— the source of all health. a couple years into farming, a colleague of mine, shephali patel, piqued my interest in herbalism by sharing her relationship to medicinal plants with me. inspired, i followed my curiosity and learned from teachers like maya blow of soul flower farm, kanchan dawn hunter of spiral gardens, karen rose of sacred vibes, shabina lafleur-gangji from seed soil spirit, amanda david of rootwork herbals and many other medicine makers and land tenders. after moving back to the east coast, i deepened my understanding of the herbs i studied by growing them alongside amara ullauri at ayni herb farm. i continue to expand my studies in herbalism each day and i hope this space can be a place where i can share my learnings with you.