Two occasions: a Hindu festival, and International Women’s Day. Two tranquil venues in the midst of the city’s noise: one a temple, another a memorial to an educational activist couple. Two musics; two stories – one traditional and religious, the other anti-caste and feminist. Two strong women at opposite ends of the caste ladder. Yet, I argue that there is great sameness amidst all this difference. Both women are connected by the metaphor of milk (Elbaz 2025) and their “othermothering” (Pasche-Guignard 2020) – key to my research on music’s inseparable intertwining with food, motherhood and caste in Maharashtra, India. Anasūyā, a Brahmin woman, becomes mother to three gods. Aklujkar (2000) terms Anasūyā a “pativratā [i.e., one devoted to her husband,] with panache”. Through Nāradīya kīrtan (Schultz 2012), a music-rich form of religious storytelling, I took a fresh look at her story. Anasūyā exerts her strength while remaining within “brahmanical patriarchy” (Chakravarti 1993) – a system that the second woman, Savitribai Phule (1831-1897), strives to dismantle. An oppressed-caste woman, she birthed a feminist, anti-caste educational revolution. I experienced her through an activist-musician’s live performance of a unique genre-blurring song. Major, minor; sweet, bitter; triumph, struggle – this song is a delectable auditory experience of Savitribai’s power. This song and the kīrtan, while sonically distinct, are unmistakably Maharashtrian in their flavour and tell stories of female power in unforgettable ways. My unique contribution to ethnomusicology is in using this complex interplay of sameness and difference to propose new gastro[ethno-]musicological (Mason 2012, Varli 2024) and multisensory theories.