Last Sunday I wrote about the happy situation where you feel you know your interviewee even before you’ve met them, thanks to their books. But “knowing” doesn’t even begin to cover the weird, intrusive feeling you get when you’ve read a memoir as searingly open as Love, Loss, and What We Ate and then sit opposite the woman who’s said it all.
When I met Padma Lakshmi in August during Mountain Echoes, the literary and cultural festival of Bhutan, I opened on that note: “It feels a little odd interviewing you after having read your book. I feel like I’ve known you for years, especially because you have not shied away from writing about anything — period pain to paternity to eating your placenta!”
She’s clearly under the weather and sipping hot tea to keep herself going, thoughtfully brought to her by Adam Dell. He is the father of her daughter Krishna and the brother of Michael Dell, the founder of computer giant Dell Inc. Her memoir ends on a sweet note, where Krishna goes ice skating with both her parents — who had previously been locked in a bitter custody battle — and urges Mom to let Dad help her up.
I am not quite sure if they are together now. Mail Online, though, said they are “very close”, in an article they ran in June headlined “Padma in bed with her baby daddy!” when she Instagrammed a picture of herself snuggling with Krishna and Adam.
The western press is obsessed with Padma. “New York Post... I think published my bra size… they got it wrong, by the way,” she chuckled on stage later that day.
Anyway, I digress. Padma laughed out loud at my admission. “It’s better than knowing nothing about me!”
Just before I sat down, I had overheard her ticking off a PR girl for “bringing journalists who know nothing about me”.
It’s difficult, really, to know “nothing” about Padma Lakshmi. She has got to be one of the most-written-about women of our times, and mostly for reasons that are really nobody’s business.
Speaking to journalist Barkha Dutt on stage and earlier to t2oS, Padma explained why she undertook this “excruciating and artistically very challenging project” of writing a memoir.
“What most people knew of me were from pictures in the paper or the magazines, where I was on the arm of my very world-famous husband (writer Salman Rushdie) or as a model, or on the red carpet or on television (among others, the Emmy-winning cooking game show Top Chef).
‘BECAUSE I CAN’
“For most of my career, it was all about what other people projected onto me. And because, not by wish, by circumstance, luck or destiny, I have had a very colourful personal life… it’s so juicy, right? And then because of the succession of two people I was involved with who were much older than me (Rushdie and billionaire business leader Ted Forstmann), there was a lot of chatter about why is she dating these men?
“A simple answer to that question, without getting into too many specifics, is because I can. I was going through this divorce and then I started dating, and I wasn’t sure…. I’m a liberated person, I make my own money, I have my own life and I am a feminist and I don’t think that the rules that apply to men are any different than the rules that apply to me. I may be arrogant or presumptuous in this philosophy, so be it.
“I do think that a lot of the attention that my private life got was because I was a woman. And because I was an attractive woman.... It had nothing to do with my job, nothing to do with the women’s health foundation I founded (Endometriosis Foundation of America). All that stuff had been out there in a very sinister way. So, I wanted to take my life back and I wanted to say, ‘Okay, if we’re gonna talk about what a hussy I was because I had two boyfriends at once, let’s talk about it’.
“I wasn’t married, I had no contract, civil or religious, with anybody. I was an adult. I do have regrets about that period, but they’re nothing what the newspapers wrote about. It had more to do with the human heart and how my actions affected other people involved.”
A MAN IS A PLAYBOY
In Love, Loss, and What We Ate, Padma writes about her anguish at having hurt Forstmann and Dell, though she never hid her dating life from either man. She also writes about how she didn’t know who the father of her unborn child was and about taking the paternity test hoping that it was “Teddy” as she called him, but finding out that it was Dell. Forstmann wanted to raise Krishna as his own, she writes. But he died in 2011, aged 71, having been diagnosed with brain cancer.
The beauty, Padma said, of writing a book like this is that “nobody can blackmail you or make you feel scared of your own shadow with your own life. And as women we are told all the time, be careful of your image.... And I felt at this age I had contributed to the culture in which I lived enough, that my work should speak for itself. And I did not want to be afraid of my own life because my own life makes me who I am. Now there isn’t anything that anybody can say about me that I haven’t said myself,” she laughed.
“And I think at a certain point I just felt, so what?! By the way, if I was sitting here having the same life as a man, you would call me a playboy.
SPICE GODDESS
Padma has just brought out a new book, The Encyclopedia of Spices and Herbs. “There really wasn’t a definitive, all-encompassing reference book. It’s almost like a textbook. Travelling all over the world, I’ve gathered this information, but also people ask me so many times, ‘What are Grains of Paradise? What are Pippali peppers? What is Gochujang?’ I wanted one place that people could go to. Obviously, you can go to the Internet, but I love books, I love the tactile nature of books and I collect cookbooks, so I wanted something that you would have in your kitchen.... I think spices are the most basic elements of cooking in any culture.... Understanding spices allows you to understand cooking in a much larger way. It’s like a painter’s palette. It’s the materials that you need to use to really express a point of view in food.”
I ask about her favourite spices and her eyes light up.
“Well, the spices that I use more are actually Middle-Eastern spices. I love sumac, which is this beautiful maroon-coloured powder that comes from a berry that’s dried. It’s a souring agent... it is great because it is a way of giving sourness to a dish without adding liquid. Usually you add vinegar, lime juice, mango or pomegranate juice to add tartness. The great beauty of sumac is not only does it look gorgeous to garnish with, it gives you a lot of flavours. You can put it in raitas, you can season fish with it when you grill….
“And I like milder chillies. As I grow older I am not able to take the chillies that are really spicy, but I want that flavour. There are a lot of great Middle-Eastern chillies, like Aleppo chilli from Syria... milder, very oily chillies. And the beauty is that when they are heated to dehydrate, the oil cooks in the chillies and actually gives it a smoky quality. So it’s almost like using a smoked paprika without as much smoke and a little more heat. It’s not as spicy as a Habanero chilli or a Cayenne. You can use it to get the flavour without getting the heat. Another one is the Urfa chilli from Turkey, which is very close in region and in flavour and there are different kinds of Urfa chillies. Some are light in colour and some are darker and those also are milder but they have a beautiful flavour. Even if you just whisk a quarter teaspoon — I would say not more than that — in salad dressing in oil and vinegar, it just gives your salad a beautiful aroma and taste that is more complex than just saying, ‘Okay I’m eating a salad’. Salads can be brilliant if you know how to make them.
ONE AT A TIME
And she has a very specific advice for spice novices.
“I wish someone had told me this when I was 20! If you are experimenting with a new spice, make a dish you understand very well and use one spice at a time, so you can taste the qualities. Does it give heat, does it give warmth, is it peppery, is it mild, is it smoky, is it fruity.... And once you learn that, start using another spice. And then you understand how to coordinate and blend them.
“When I’m thinking of a recipe — it sounds corny to say — but I actually imagine how those spices would taste together. I picture in my mind, I try to feel on my palate, imagine how a spice tastes…. And that’s how I dream up recipes.”
‘I GO TO FOOD’
Padma credits her career in food to a “sensitive palate”.
“I love to taste different foods. I am very curious about that. I am not a very avid eater of meat because I didn’t grow up with it until adolescence. I am very curious about the food of different cultures and I think I’ve always been that way because I’ve had a sensitive palate. I may not have consciously known that until a few years ago, but I think my senses, specifically my sense of smell and taste, were curious because they were being stimulated by different things, and I noticed properties of different ingredients in food and I wanted to explore that. A person who is very athletic will invariably take up a sport, whether they are encouraged to do so… it will find you. Just like musicians go to instruments when they see them. I go to food,” she laughed.
THE HOTBOD
It’s difficult to match this “food lover” with the thin, sexy model sitting in front of me. In fact, before I headed out to Bhutan, a t2 girl had a very important task for me: please find out how she stays so slim.
“I have great metabolism. I’m lucky. It’s genetics, you know. It is what allowed me to become a model,” is Padma’s simple answer.
But not just a foodie, she’s also a judge in a food show.
“Yeah. I typically gain seven or eight kilos every year at the end of filming (of Top Chef). I consume 5,000 to 8,000 calories a day. I am contract-bound to taste everything on the show so that I can adequately judge them.
“What it takes me six weeks to gain, it probably takes me 12 weeks to lose, in a healthy way. And I’m vain too. The problem with being considered attractive is it’s a drug. And it is a power, it’s an asset, it’s a currency. So then you become afraid of losing that currency. I am a woman on television who is 47 years old, I am a depreciating asset,” is her candid assessment.
“But I want to look good, I want to be on the best-dressed list, I want to have a nice dress (for the Emmy Awards night). So every year when filming of the show finishes, I go into diet mode. I don’t eat sweets, I don’t eat meat, I don’t eat wheat, I don’t eat fried foods, I don’t drink any wine, and I exercise one or two hours a day almost every day of the week.”
END OF A MARRIAGE
Padma has struggled with the gynaecological condition, endometriosis, almost all her life, a disease for which she has had multiple surgeries and a disease that she says in her book, contributed to the breakdown of her marriage with Salman Rushdie.
“Even after the surgery and all of Dr. Seckin’s talking to him, Salman didn’t seem to grasp the disease’s impact, on me or on our marriage. He was absent, emotionally and often physically.... I had been feeling guilty, like a bad wife, for not wanting to make love. It was this issue that was the nucleus of much of the strife between my husband and me. It must have been hard for him, after experiencing the intensity of my passion for him for all those years, to be confronted with my ebbing desire, my diminished wellness of being, and the increased distraction of my work.”
Having been diagnosed with endometriosis after years and years of suffering debilitating period pain, Padma started the Endometriosis Foundation of America with her doctor to raise awareness about this disease.
During her session in Bhutan, she was happy to report that the foundation had helped launch a research centre at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) for gynaecology, the first of its kind in the US, and managed to educate 15,000 young girls about this disease.
THE MOM
Around the time her marriage ended and she was dating again, Padma was told by doctors that it would be next-to-impossible for her to conceive naturally. So she writes, she “abandoned the use of birth control as unnecessary.” In February 2010, her daughter Krishna was born.
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have many jobs and do many things in my life, but the thing that I take most seriously is my job as a mother,” she said. “I always knew I wanted to be a mother, but I never knew I would enjoy it so much.”
And just like your mom and mine, she tricks her child into eating veggies.
“My khichri is not a traditional khichri. It’s got very small chopping of lots of different vegetables. Because I want to make sure my daughter gets enough vegetables. So I sneak vegetables in. I chop them very small so she has no choice but to eat them, she can’t separate them out,” she grinned, adding that “like most Indians, khichri for me is a comfort food.”
To know Padma’s khichri recipe, read Love, Loss, and What We Ate. Read it also to know of a life being lived fully and unapologetically.
— Samhita Chakraborty
