HANCOCK — After years of living between two cultures, Nila Gandhi-Schwatlo has learned to blend the two in creating her own recipes of a traditional Indian condiment.

Nila’s chutneys mix both Indian and New England cuisine, as her chutney recipes have names like Cranberry Craze, Pumpkin Power and Nutty Apple.

“These are not really traditionally Indian,” Gandhi-Schwatlo says.

She started the business two years ago with her husband, Roy Gandhi-Schwatlo, after they moved to Hancock from Dublin. The Hancock Farmers Market, with vendors selling out of the old town horse stalls, reminded her of the open markets in India from her childhood and she wanted to take part. So she decided to sell her homemade chutney there.

“It gets me in touch with people around here, which is great. So I am becoming more of a New Englander,” she said.

Her chutney’s are now sold at Nature’s Green Grocer in Peterborough, Countryhouse Corner in Dublin and Hannah Grimes Marketplace in Keene. She says they will soon be sold at Roy’s Market in Peterborough.

Although she travels to an Indian market in Nashua to buy mangoes for the Sweet Heat chutney, Gandhi-Schwatlo gets her apples from Norway Hill Orchard and berries from a Hancock farm.

“We buy local wherever we can,” she says.

Born into an Indian family in Rangoon, Burma, Gandhi-Schwatlo grew up in both Eastern and Western culture.

“I knew English fluently because we were English subjects. I spoke English better than I spoke my own language,” she says.

And although her family is Hindu, she was educated in missionary and convent boarding schools in India.

“I was brought up with both Christ and Krishna,” she says. “So I still think of both of them as my pals.”

Growing up in two cultures was often confusing. At the convent, the nuns would punish her for not wearing shoes inside, at home she would be punished when she did wear the shoes.

“It was hard. ... You just grew up with the absurdity of it all,” she says.

Gandhi-Schwatlo says she was never known for her cooking in India.

“I was told I couldn’t cook by my grandmother, so I went the other extreme, I went into literature.”

After graduating from a convent college, she taught western English literature at a university in India for four years. Then in 1970 when she was 28 and still single, her father sent her on a trip across the United States with an American couple.

“My father was very embarrassed nobody wanted to marry me,” she says.

The trip began in California and ended in New York City. Before leaving for home, though, she decided she wanted to remain in New York.

“When you were single in those days you couldn’t go out anywhere alone,” she says of living in India. “I just decided I didn’t want to go back.”

She entered a PhD program in New York City, planning to become an English professor, and took several jobs to support herself, including being the first female night watchman in Washington Square. It was difficult, though, and before finishing the program she left to teach literature and English language as a lecturer at Lehman College.

In 1982, she met Roy and they were married a year later. She says that like her chutney, the marriage is a blend.

“We are a fusion. We are a fusion of two cultures.”

When she retired from teaching in 1996, the Gandhi-Schwatlos moved to Dublin.

To make her chutney, they started Monadnock Fusion Kitchen LLC in a commercial kitchen, which they lease, in the Noone Falls building in Peterborough.

Having the kitchen has allowed them to expand their business with another traditional Indian dish, curry. To sell the curry fresh every week they started a Curry of the Week club. Members of the private club receive an e-mail telling them what the curry of the week will be and they place orders and pick up their curry at the kitchen on Saturdays, during the winter when the Hancock Market is closed, or on Sundays when the market is up and running.

“We’re growing slowly,” she says. “We don’t want to do a business at the cost of fun.”

The club gives Nila and Roy a chance to chat with friends who come to pick up their curry order, and offer samples of their chutney and a cup of Chai tea when the chutney’s too spicy.

“They wouldn’t be chutney without the spice,” she says.