9.7 A Life Bigger Than a Michelin Star ft. Suvir Saran

What does it take to build a Michelin-starred restaurant when you arrive in New York heartbroken and broke?

In the latest episode of Books & Beyond, Tara sits down with Suvir Saran, the chef behind Devi; the first Indian restaurant in North America to receive a Michelin star, to talk about his memoir Tell My Mother I Like Boys.

But this episode isn’t just about food. From growing up in Delhi feeling “othered,” to becoming one of the world’s first openly gay chefs, to being left on a New York sidewalk by his first love with Tiffany rings still in his pocket, Suvir speaks candidly about racism, heartbreak, illness, a 20-year relationship that shaped him, and the difficult decision to return to India at 53 and begin again.

Tara and Suvir also unpack what it really took to make Indian cuisine “chic” in New York before it was trendy, why he chose not to villainise the people who hurt him, the story behind his 27-page acknowledgements (yes, 27!), and how the title came to be.

This episode looks at the messy side of building a career and a life, the risks, the reinventions, and the moments that force you to grow up fast.

If you’ve ever felt out of place or caught between two worlds, this episode will stay with you.

‘Books and Beyond with Bound’ is the podcast where Tara Khandelwal and Michelle D’costa uncover how their books reflect the realities of our lives and society today. Find out what drives India’s finest authors: from personal experiences to jugaad research methods, insecurities to publishing journeys. Created by Bound, a storytelling company that helps you grow through stories. Follow us @boundindia on all social media platforms. 

Transcript

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I was still new and I was daring enough to wear Kolhapuri chappals in the snob and I was poor enough to not care. Today we're going to be diving into the world of the man who made history by opening Devi which was the first Indian restaurant in North America to ever receive a Michelin star and he's going to talk to us about his amazing journey in his new memoir, Tell My Mother I Like Boys. This is Suveer Saran. He traces his incredible life from places like Delhi, Nagpur, Mumbai and eventually he goes into the heart of New York City. In the memoir, he also talks about coming out. He's one of the world's first openly gay chefs and he talks about his culinary vision that has shaped iconic restaurants that we all, I think, have gone to at least once. I know I have. 1-8 Commune, Newmar, Vashti and Jolie, to name a few. What I really liked about this book and why I wanted to interview Suveer is that one of those memoirs that's completely honest and I know that all memoirs say this is an unflinching tale but this really is an unflinching tale because it's about growing up, facing prejudice, being different and then going out of the country, meeting all of these star-studded characters and I was privy to some scenes that really made me want to cry in the book and by the end, I felt like I truly knew you, Suveer and also, of course, I'm a very big foodie. So can't wait to dive into the book with you. Welcome to the show. Thank you for having me on the show and I am sorry that I made you cry or the book made you cry but it's me writing the book. My apologies. I think it's a success that it made me cry because it was so emotional and when I read it, when I saw the cover and I thought, okay, there'll be a lot more about your restaurant experience because you're such a sort of like profound restauranteur, you said you made history but it was much more personal than I expected. It was a very personal exploration of identity, queerness and self-acceptance. So, you know, tell me a little bit more about how the idea of sharing your life as a memoir came about. I left India at the age of 20 and I arrived in India at the age of 45, 46 and I left broken, I came broken and in between, I lived a fantastical life that dreams can't share with people but in the background of all those fantastical moments was a human being who had been challenged, who had been broken, who had been betrayed, who had betrayed, who had loved, who had been loved, who had been left, who had been yelled at, who had been called an effing Arab terrorist, idolatrous Hindu, effing Spic because they thought I was Spanish, Sabra because they thought I was Jewish. So I've been called every kind of person in America because they couldn't understand because of my features and light skin, they can't understand Indians have all kinds of looks and colours but Americans were daft at the best of times and then you go to the hinterland, they're dafter than daft and but they are good people and I realised that there are different forms of racism, bigotry, hate, misogyny, othering across the world and my story was not unique as well as very normal and people would tell me to tell my story because they wanted to get into the head of the celebrity chef, the whistle star chef, the best-selling cookbook author, the gay icon in America and I was writing the book because I knew there were other fractured, broken, challenged, suffocating people out there who think they're the only ones living in misery and I wanted them to know that life is brilliant when we understand it in its totality, the misery, the suffering, the hate, the bigotry, the racism, the othering, that in addition to all the successes and fulfilments and dreams and aspirations that we realise is the culmination of a life well lived and a life that you think is meaningful. So I wanted to tell people, give people a true story that doesn't just gloss over everything and is purple prose and is fantasia on pages. I gave them the truth and I thought to myself if they want my memoir they'll have to deal with something very honest and I stripped myself naked for the, I hope, the betterment of all of humanity as Sashi Tharoor said it but I think there's no other way to write a memoir than to see people face to face in your own lifetime because a lot of people write these very beautiful memoirs, they're fantastic but everybody knows the emperor has no clothes and it's all just hogwash and smoke and mirrors and I hope I'll have a few more years to live and I wanted people to respect the man writing them and to have some, I've stripped myself of any dignity but I also think hopefully that people will say he's been brave in doing so and they'll forgive me for my failures, my trespasses, my betrayals and my mistakes and see that I've tried to grow up with every moment into a richer, better, kinder human being. Yeah I think what you said is correct that you have read it all because in some memoirs you can tell when the author is glossing over certain elements and in this I could tell that you didn't really gloss over anything, in fact I think you downplayed a little bit of the success story. So tell me like you know what was the most, what is the hardest part about writing this memoir because there's so many difficult moments, you talk about your relationships, you talk about you know moving to New York, all of these things so what was that one incident or one anecdote that was very difficult for you to write? I never give straightforward answers, I can never pick one thing. I think Robert, my first lover for whom I moved to America, leaving me at the side of a sidewalk and zipping away in a cab after I presented him Tiffany rings that I bought that morning for both of us to exchange. I'm at a loss for words for the man that Robert left behind but I'm also grateful to Robert for having left me behind because I wouldn't be me today if he hadn't done so that's one part of my life that was very painful to relive. The other I think America before I came home I had a relationship that was falling apart, I had a home that was being torn apart because of my illness and I had an illness that was literally tearing me apart so those two were the painful moments. I've never been afraid of the bullying, the name calling, the hate, the bigotry, I've grown up with it. All of that I can handle, these others were more difficult to relive and I think my editor said there was one hero in the book, Charlie, my lover of 20 years, she said you're not the hero and I said to her that you know I've told my story, my reckoning, my squaring up, my mea culpa's and I've not shown his weaknesses, I've shown his strengths and when Charlie writes his memoir it's up to him if he wants to share the moments of vulnerable mistakes and challenges that he had to deal with that I had to deal with but it's not my thing to write so I've shown all the good things he did for me and all the challenges that I posed to him and yet he was good and for me that matters in a truthful memoir two people will see life in two different ways often and if I can reflect and share the truth as close to the truth that I see it even today that's the important thing I think to do in a memoir. Very few do it and I didn't do any mudslinging but I did show my goals and my character my handling of situations in my destiny in my pitfalls and failures and all of it and that's what I did. That's very interesting and he kept coming up in chapter after chapter how you guys built a life together, you know your home together and then finally sort of like when you decided to move back to Bombay because of your deteriorating health which was a very difficult decision to make and I really liked that exploration of you know all of your relationships so when you look back now how did that relationship sort of shape you in the person that you are now? When you have something good you often don't pay attention to it you're just enjoying the journey and the ride and the discovery and the all the fluff that comes with it now that I've had it for 20 years and I've lost it I value it a lot more and in hindsight but I'm also very grateful that we ended it when we did because we were both young enough to start lives again. Charlie has a lover they are engaged and I think he's already on his way to having a new beautiful chapter of his life's journey. I have I'm ready to do a firework I have many suitors and I don't know who to choose or who would choose me but I do know that Charlie was a very important and salient and a very rich part of my life and he made me who I am today in big ways and that's I think for any marriage of modern time that's enough and we I think both were be very good with each other we also knew how to challenge each other and we've left each other with a lot of I think goodness I hope Charlie thinks the same but I he has blessed me with a lot of love a lot of affection a lot of support a lot of beautiful stories and blessings and I'm grateful for it. Yes he sounds like a really wonderful person and I think the book really has painted him as a hero you know which which I really love that you put that and you portrayed him in that way in the book. I want to talk about your restaurant you know it really changed how Indian food was seen in North America and I just want to know and it challenged the notion that Indian cuisine was merely ethnic nowadays I think you know we're beyond that notion and Indian cuisine is on a global stage but I remember even when I was studying in America it was still sort of like there was sort of like very few fine dining Indian restaurants at that time and in Indian food was mostly you know the smaller joints where you get takeout all of that stuff so can you just tell me a little bit more about you know little insight about what is the process of opening such a groundbreaking restaurant and and how that restaurant you know was received by people in New York. So what you need for opening that groundbreaking restaurant is a child who was broken by himself in society you need a boy who doesn't have anything but himself to entertain him there are no role models there's absence of any homoerotic vocabulary diction libraries cinema nothing that boy and then you need a teenager who's bullied you need a 19 year old who arrived at JJ School of Art and is othered because he's fairer than the 99 percent of his classmates and looking chikna and it has to be either Punjabi or nothing else and they couldn't understand how I could be anything but if not I was a foreigner and then I arrived in New York and I'm a foreigner again so you know you needed all of these ingredients all of these happenings to get a character who was bold enough to say I'll make a degustation menu I'll cook ghar ka khana I'll train a restaurant chef to deliver it my partner was daring enough to believe in my crazy BS and together we created this menu which hopefully luckily for us was received very well by New Yorkers and Indians and non-Indians alike and the amazing thing was we had 50 percent Indians 50 percent non-Indians a lot of Indian restaurants including the biggest ones that we hear about today have 98 percent Indians and very few Westerners we were able to get a big mix because people were curious Indians were proud and everybody was getting something novel and different if we had opened Devi today we'd still be serving if I served the same food we'd be doing cutting-edge dining but we had we had all kinds of things that mothers home cooks and house husbands who cooked with pride were making in India we were serving at the table fanciful beautifully plated with partners in crime within the plate there could be lamb chop with pear chutney with tomato pachari with lemon rice putting the whole plate together and people said oh my god it's a grey green the food critic of New York magazine and a dear friend of mine by the end said that so he takes you on a train ride through India cherry picks the best flavours you can eat and they were authentic flavours these were recipes that would be dying if we hadn't rescued them and brought them into the marketplace and we gave the Indian homes across India a place of pride on the table and served food that no Indian was serving anywhere on the planet in a fine dining restaurant and it happened to be 2004 and the Michelin guide came to America in 2007 we were one of 18 restaurants that got the first Michelin stars him and then I was shocked but we were very happy we were proud for India we didn't take it too seriously for us because it's the gut and I like how you mention in the book also that you know your interested in so many other art forms or paint or embroidery textile all of these things come together anything my hands could do anything your hands could do right right and I think that's just amazing because you know as creative people the more sort of like inputs you have from different fields the better that you can put into the work you're doing and I think that definitely would show for you and I love the New York chapters because I actually studied in New York and I studied at Barnard College part of Columbia yeah so I just I love I fell in love with the city and it's always been my dream to sort of you know live and work there but that never ended up happening so when I read my walls like this I kind of live vicariously through you and obviously it's not easy right when you first moved to New York you know apart from that whole Robert scene and how he left you which was unimaginable you were juggling a lot you were juggling your studies you had a retail job you know and then you started hosting these dinners which became kind of legendary and through that you know as you said you had this fantastical life and you know glamorous life but you were always feeling other as you said you know all along so I want to know a little bit more about you know what those early early years in the city felt like for you so when Robert left me on the street side I had a couple of months rent money in the bank and student loan for the scholarship that I got not scholarship loan that I'd taken for the tuition at school of visual arts and I was crying but I could have words come out I couldn't hear myself crying but I was crying I was still new and I was daring enough to wear kolhapuri chappals in this snot and I was poor enough to not care I thought to myself if I crack today if I have a nervous breakdown which I think I'm having who will rescue me who will bring my belongings to my parents how will I even afford to pay ticket back to India if I survive and that's when I said you just have to live and I started living so it's policing yourself at your most precarious and broken moments to be choosing a mindful path and doing what's correct rather than what's easy yeah and I really like the title of the book as well you know tell tell my mother I like boys even now there's a lot of sort of still is a lot in some circles a lot of stigma around queerness which absolutely should not exist but I can only imagine you know when you sort of you know growing up in Delhi and you went to model school my mom actually also went to model school so it was very interesting to see your descriptions of the school and you know you bullied you you come from this very loving family you travel you know from Delhi to Nagpur tell me a little bit more about sort of you know the title of this book and how you dealt with you know the stigma being one of you know the world's first openly gay chefs oh the title I would be dishonest if I said the title had any connection to anything in the book it was a shocking I thought to myself I have to create titles that will stay with people this was title number 28 out of 30 that I offered my editor at Penguin and Manasi came back saying the team loves number 28 tell my mother I like boys and I had a panic moment what is mom going to say because all of a sudden I'm like oh god I hope this doesn't it's not something mom doesn't like I said mom the publisher has come up with the title she's oh very good what is it tell my mother I like boys I love it I said what she said baba people will hold on to it they'll remember it it's a lovely title I said mom but how does it make sense for the memoir she said doesn't matter she said it's just a catchy title run with it and she gave her blessings I called because I wrote to Manasi and I said I can't say yes because I have to see if mom is comfortable I don't want her to be upset it's bad enough that I'm airing my dirty laundry publicly she doesn't need to be humiliated further when mom said yeah it was a catchy title Manasi was so relieved and I'm glad you liked it I have no story that can connect it to any reality in the book I've given yeah I was looking for actually I was looking for the story I was like okay like there doesn't seem to be a correlation which is why I wanted to ask you about it but love the story behind it so were there any moments that you felt oh my god you know I can't put this out was anything that you left out and what were some of the reactions from your family and friends to your memoir so I didn't give it to family and friends to read I didn't because I knew there'd be reactions they'll all want to protect me and my dignity and I didn't want their edited version of what I need to say I shared it with one aunt of all the relatives my aunt Usha Bhatnagar he was a defence secretary before retiring Usha was a musical maestro she was a student of Begum Akhtar so Usha was in her she was 87 88 year old 87 86 or 87 and I would read her passages on the phone and I said what do you think and some of them I've talked about the relatives and she said baba naughty naughty but good naughty I said you're not belittling people you're telling a story that takes people to a better place of enlightened thinking and you're doing it without malice and you're doing it in a very non-bitchy gossipy way I said really she said very Vedantic and she knows that my mom Bhua and I we're all as Vedanta we look at religion as being a practise that you do every day when you wake up until you go to bed it's not about ritual it's about enlightened thinking that you have to just push yourself to be a better human being every day and she said you did it and that coming from Usha Bhua we lost her before the book came out just a few months ago and that told me I've done something right because Usha Bhua is a like my mother voracious reader and she said baba nobody writes like this you write poetry in each word she said each word is chosen with care she did your rhyming lines within words are right in each sentence there's rhythm there's there's a good there's you know we have all classical singers and she said your words are like music she said go with it so she read the most of the book I read to her but other than that no one else and you had one more part to that question that I'm forgetting was there anything that you feel like you wanted to say but could not say no there was a journalist who talked with me on the phone and he said Mr. Saran I look at you as the when you enter a room in India he said I know what happened in New York he said but I've seen you in different events nobody looks at anybody else I said that's unfortunate because I'm very ordinary looking and I said I also have 53 after interviewing me he said you have a messianic quality about you and I said really he said messiahs know their truth and they're coming from somewhere of knowledge and they live without fear and he said you're writing your columns and this book he said they share that and he said now that I've met you I know that you have that he said after reading your book I think I know where you got it from and I said where he said you came out to your mother at 20 you have nothing to hide you have nothing to fear and he said you're living your life unafraid he said your father told your aunts and uncles and relatives at your brother's wedding so we will get married when Charlie and Suvi are allowed to get married in India allows homosexuals to get married he said your father de-weaponised them he took away any bullets they had because he said oh my son is a homosexual deal with it get him the ability to marry I'll bless that union so he said you had that you made that happen he said it wasn't that you got it on a platter you came out you've been a champion for gay people you've been opened yourself publicly in every which way and today you have nothing to lose and I thought to myself he'd given me a crux of my life that I'd never put seen in this structure and he's right I live my life knowing no matter what I do what can somebody do to me tell my mother he's gay tell my mother he's sexually active tell my mother he's broken up with his boyfriend my mom knows it all what are they going to embarrass me with so I think that that I never had fears I'd never questioned what I should write I questioned who I questioned should I give names of people who hurt me who things that people did that were physically abusive that were mentally abusive and I thought no I'll leave them in broader terms because I deal with the abuse coming my way not with the names of people because they have children they have family members they have spouses they have histories and they have connections that will all be embarrassed to have them in their lives if I spill this tale that still has another side because they haven't written their version of it so I spared that for me and them and I've tried to tell truths that I have took account for not others and I did like you know as I mentioned that you portrayed Charlie as a lovely character and I kind of wondered a little bit more about what happened between you guys but I figured that okay maybe that's something you didn't want to you know portray because obviously you know he would also be reading it and things like that you know in every relationship when the doors close to their bedroom to a private space a lot happens there are mishaps there are mistakes there's growing up there's learning a marriage like rearing a child comes with no book that teaches you how to do it right and it's a struggle at the best of times and then you have two people with great personalities and boisterous personalities and a sense of self there's more friction to be had and it's just normal so I think it can sensationalise the book it can make it even more a more successful bestseller but I wasn't out there to do it I wrote the book as a way of giving a balm to people who were at a precipice of breakdown of suicide of a point of no return that no there's more ahead and you're not alone we all have similar struggles with different forms different genders and ways of loving and geographies but the human element in them is pretty much the same across all the region one of the things I liked a lot about the book is your return to India which I do find that a lot of people who in our eyes you know I find there's this trend that they're coming back to India they achieve a great success there and a lot of them are sort of like moving back here and it makes sense because there's family here you know you're from here and there's so much opportunity right now also in India happening right now so tell me a little bit about this homecoming you know that you live you've lived all over the world uh you've sort of like almost become American because you're there for so long you had a partner there 32 years exactly and now you're living in Bandra uh and you know you're opening all of these restaurants here you have all these amazing friends here tell me a little bit more about that transition and the homecoming not easy nothing I would wish for if there's one thing I don't wish for in my other life is a homecoming like that but I'm also loving what the new exciting things I'm doing I am I am American I am a New Yorker I'm very private I'm very over the top in every way and very expressive and I'm very uh I'm a free speech challenger everywhere this is not the time in India to be any of that so that's what I have to often silence myself and muffle my words and not say the things I want to say so that I can be alive tomorrow so that's the difficult part but the world is in a very challenging place we have right-wing nuts and left-wing crazies and very few centred people and the world is being torn apart I don't know if America you see the America I left isn't what Donald Trump has made it today it I can't recognise what's happening there so uh I everything happened to me at the right time I'm so grateful I'm not in America but you know um I'm glad I came here India gave me life India gave me healing India gave me friends family music food peace of mind through my family members who were taking care of me easy recovery for me because I was scared for like nobody in America would have done not out of not no intention but no resources and the struggle I have is that I'm here at 53 having to prove myself to people who do not know nothing about me in America I still have recognition people know me they've read about me they've come of age cooking for my books I get lovely letters from young men and women who've grown up with their parents cooking my recipes and these are white brown black beige yellow all kinds of young people that whose parents have given them this book to go to college and cook in their dorm kitchen so I'm recognised that in India I have to prove my metal at 53 I'm working hard every day I have to keep up with the working class the people who are overworked because I have to sell my story like I did when I was 20 so in some ways I'm a 20 year old again and I don't have that body but I'm challenging myself to work hard so people don't think of me as a dim fool and it is tough with 53 year old body parts when I'm doing it and India gave me writing I was an editor of the school magazine in India but I stopped writing I wrote my books but I had a co-writer who helped with some of the work there but my column slice of life every Sunday in Indian Express my Thursday book review aftertaste every Thursday in Indian Express I write a softboil for open magazine every Friday I write every month for hello magazine and I write for hospitality horizon every other month I write for Rob report I write for ANI news and then other pieces here and there and I write a bi-weekly column for then in Hindustani my version of Hindi Urdu uh and yesterday I got Mr. Mishra national editor calling me to say and I called mom I said mom your kid from modern school who had the guts to take a senior Hindi in 11th and 12th but couldn't get the exam because it was a conflict with another subject his writing in Hindi would do after 32 years of never even speaking it enough is now being appreciated by the national editor of the Dainik Jagran and he said to me don't change anything and my best friend Yogi Suri who published his Milap newspaper after reading my Hindi column said you may even write better in Hindi than your superlative writing in English so India gave me this I didn't know I could do this and India has given me young kids who I see as broken as me some as racist as the worst in America a lot of religious bigots when I find them I take the ones that I can and I groom them and I educate them and I expose them to the world and realities and the plethora of people who make the human condition brutal and I just leave them with these images and thoughts and movies and books and readings and musings and I hope that they'll become richer versions of themselves and lose the hate and bigotry and all the othering that religion and politics can do to people when they're young and impressionable with very little education or ill education. Wow I want to know a little bit more also about your writing process but before that I don't think I've ever seen a book with with as large of an acknowledgement section your knowledge 27 pages yeah I've never seen usually acknowledgement pages are one two at max five pages this was you know a lot of acknowledgement pages which I was I really love to see that and I was also like okay your editor has allowed you to have 27 pages of acknowledgements but also in the book there's a lot about friendship so you speak about your friendship with Manish, Manish Malhotra, Anandita Dey, a lot of you know these characters show up tell me a little bit more about you know your friendships and the friendships in your life right now and how they shaped you. My earlier four books have had three or four page acknowledgements this was a memoir so being a memoir it required acknowledgements of people that have kept me smiling despite living with challenging pain with medical trauma that makes everyday living impossible. I every day hoped that India would have euthanasia and I could go. I tell all my dear friends that if they're wishing for anybody to go they should wish for me to go. I said I'm not I don't despise life I've lived enough in misery that if I can go and start the next life that Hindus can get, wish it upon me. So that's the condition I live with, the pain I live with, the challenges medically I live with. So all this drama is to take my pain away but there are people who made my life easier, interesting, fun, more palatable, more adventurous. I had to thank all of them. So that's the 27 pages and Manasi, kudos to her that you know by the editing process today is very different. My editors in America are very hands-on and each page coming back with stains, with gibberish, with questions, with enhance this, can you think this differently, nothing. So I was shocked. Is that good a writer that I am today? But you know Manasi giving me those 27 pages, I tried to ask the copy editor how did you allow me? I said I thought I had to have a struggle. 27 being reduced to three pages, why did you let me go with this? They said even in your acknowledgements you tell a story. I said what? They said it reads like a novel acknowledgement. So I don't know, I haven't gone back and read it but they told me it read like a story, it had a purpose and they said each paragraph told a different story of my life. So these are people who've literally held me, given me space to breathe, forgiven me, encouraged me, dreamt with me, heard me, seen me, felt me and yet let me be. So they had to be acknowledged. Rohit Bal, we lost him before the memoir came, he was so excited but he didn't get to see it, read it. Gurda at 14, I was 14, he and I thought we'd be lovers and he found out one day that every morning when I would go home early, while he was just about getting ready to sleep, I wasn't going to go home to sleep before college, I was going to go home to sleep before going to school and he gave me a tight slap and he said I could be in jail, you're 14 year old and he was I think 26. So Gurda opened up Delhi for me, he brought me Geetanjali Kashyap who was a young and budding woman talent designer when we didn't have many or many. He brought Kaka and Nalin, Sardar Mahijit Singh and Nalin Tomar who had the most beautiful shop of Hoska's village called the Chaupal, it was the centre of the Hoska's village and of course Bina had her big stores but Kaka was the Chaupal. He brought me them and he brought me all kinds of other people in Bombay and Delhi, the who's who of the country who he was hiding from, he didn't tell them he was a guy or whatever but Suvir is gay, he has to be given agency, he has to be given safety, he has to be given a voice and he has to be brought to all the fun parties. So the 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20 year old in India, Bombay and Delhi, I was privy to adult parties, beautiful conversations, exquisite food and style and talent and I came of age with that when I shouldn't have. So as tormented and troubled and broken as I was, I got to see the world through these fantastic eyes of people like Manish and Abu Jani and Sandeep Khosla and Bina Rahmani and Kaka and Nalin and Lekha Poddar and Bim Bissal and so many names. I could spend 27 hours and still not be able to document all the people that touched me in those days and Vikram Kama Singh, you know the architects, painters, singers, authors, lawyers, all kinds of people, Khuswant Singh. I was a 14 year old who could be with the who's who because these people made it happen and they get this gay boy who was broken inside a fantastic life to be part of and this is the boy that arrived in New York and said why are you letting Robert break you? You can now conquer New York and these years in India with the glitterati gave me the courage to say I don't have a good time in New York but I can do something and I sang and cooked and I wore Indian clothes and I tried to wear them with style and I tried to speak the India story, an India story that brought all Indians together, didn't divide, didn't conquer, didn't rule any other and people were blown away by the India story I shared. It was the story of I would tell people this song and others like this they were like India is so rich in plurality and I would say of course it is and America wasn't and so they were looking through at India through me and hearing about in India that I'd grown up in where language plurality, religious plurality, cultural, societal plurality, all kinds of plurality thrived and that India they either thought of elephants and camels and their dung or some geeky software people but they'd never known this India that sang and danced and ate in a medley that was just mind-blowingly diverse and plural and they loved it and that's why when Vikas Khanna in the back of the book says that he was not just a chef, he was a cultural ambassador of India. You know I wasn't doing anything, I was sharing my India and people were blown over. They'd never read about it, they'd never heard about it, they were only witnessing it through my stories, my food, my house of parties and the people I gathered from India at my table and brought others to see and hear from and they were shocked that India was so chic, so brilliant, so rich, so modest but brilliant. I think you sort of yeah presented India as exactly chic as well right which I don't think you know many people in America have that idea. I remember even when I went to study, somebody I remember asked me, oh you know do you go to school on elephants? I actually got that question or how come you speak English so well? This was something in 1994. I came to New Mexico when I was at the home of a senator from the USDN and his wife said to me, honey you're Indian? I said yeah I'm Indian. You know we have the the chancellor of the university is Indian, we've invited him to have breakfast with you tomorrow so that you can be hanged together. Breakfast time came, no first it was we had to do grace at the table and we were doing grace and everybody closed their eyes, I didn't. Everybody held their hands together, I didn't and when they finished he said to me you must be a Muslim. I said I'm Hindu, same difference. Ah I knew they'd noticed that I hadn't done grace. Then at the next morning the chancellor that I had to be introduced to is a southern Indian man, deeply beautifully ebony coloured skin that I would envy and I would want for myself and very different from me and she looks at me, looks at him, ah and she looks at the chancellor and says oh you must be a lower class Indian and the chancellor and I looking at each other yeah he said yes ma'am he's white for India and the things they say. A few years ago a very important magazine called me and offered me a big chunk of money to reveal the dirt that I had to endure as a 20, 30, 40 year old in America and they were giving me a lot of money because they know I've gone through a lot and I said if I tell you these tales with names, a lot of good Americans will lose respect for their father, their mother, their grandfather and the people they idolise. I said I don't have it in me to do it. I said I tell it in different ways. I write about it, I let people hear. I said I don't hide what happened but I don't want to say that there are families that will be broken for no reason. They've broken me, I don't need to break others to get the point across and but these were brilliant times but sadly the good America that doesn't exist, the bad one still exists and this story, this book I hope is a way of people realising that human beings are the same, challenges are the same, they have different ways to conform, they take different shapes and forms but what ails us, what heals us, what breaks us, what forms us is pretty much the same and if you look at it like that I hope someone somewhere in many different places will be healed not as a bomb that just changes everything but they realise they're not alone, that there are others walking the walk and there are people who make life come together in a very special way and see the light of day shining bright at the other end of the tunnel. Lovely and now what's next for you? What are you working on next? If I had my way, I would write a column every day. I used to write 40,000 words a day when I didn't have any column. I'm not writing 40,000 words a day anymore. I write columns and file them a bit. I've written I think 12 books in the last two years, 300 plus page books and my agent and other agents in America have told me I'd have to put them in some kind of a legal arrangement that post my passing people will have the ability to publish them and so because I'm writing at least four or five books a year and I have much to say and I don't know how I've got the gift of being able to put it into words today. I don't know and I don't write for thinking of it as a gift for others. I write to find catharsis, to find healing, to find forgiveness for myself and the other. I've also started writing fiction and I'm training chefs, young chefs, young minds to not just be chefs, to be humans, to be kind employers, to be gentle siblings, to be gracious to their parents, to be forgiving of their elders, to be kind to the poor but also to themselves. So I'm hoping that my writing and this memoir and the mentoring with this I think because I saw death so closely I now don't care about fears. I'm hoping that I can teach young lives to be smart and not copy the mistakes of others. That's lovely. Here's to your next era. Thank you so much for your time and really enjoyed speaking to you. For my listeners, what's one food, place or person that makes you feel most like yourself? Tell me in the comments. Thank you so much, Subir. Hope you enjoyed this episode of Books and Beyond with Bound. This podcast is created by Bound, a company that helps you grow through stories. Find us at Bound India on all social media platforms. Tune in every Wednesday as we peek into the lives and minds of some brilliant authors from India and South Asia.