Venba from Venba

Venba is probably the most ordinary of our best characters of 2023. She’s not a superhero or Chosen One trying to save the world, she’s a mother trying to make the best of the world she has. Venba’s cooking mechanics personify her fear that her family is losing touch with her culture. Her recipe book is worn around the edges, with swaths of its words and drawings lost to the elements, and in their place are torn pages and smeared scribbles. She constantly wrestles with her fear that, if she can’t preserve her mother’s Biryani or Puttu recipe, will her son Kavin have any connection to where he comes from?

Venba’s story is deeply tied to her Indian roots and position as an immigrant in a new place, but as she attempts to encapsulate her family’s history in dishes to serve to her son—who is more in touch with his Canadian home than the ones his parents left behind—she touches on universal fears of our history being forgotten, and the ubiquitous love of mutual understanding. — Kenneth Shepard