#
Here's a thought experiment I want you to think about, and at the end of that experiment
#
is a question. When I ask you that question, I'd like you to pause this podcast for a
#
moment and take a stab at answering it. Imagine that you meet your future self in a Zoom call
#
that somehow travels through time. You are allowed to ask this future version of you
#
one question. How should I live my life? What answer does your future self give? That's
#
my question to you. What advice does your future self give you when it comes to living
#
your life? Pause and answer this for me. Well, here's my answer. My future self tells me
#
two words. Pay attention. When I think about the way I live my life, that's one thing I
#
don't do enough of. That's one thing all of us don't do enough of. We spend time living
#
in the past or the future and not enough in the present. And when we are in the present,
#
we are not paying attention. We are always distracted, always absent. Think about the
#
modern marriage, for example. What is the modern marriage? Two people side by side in
#
their bed, lights off, their face illuminated by the blue glow from the screen in front
#
of them. What is the modern family? Maybe together sometimes physically, but always
#
alone together. You sit with your loved ones and stare into your phone. You sit at a cafe
#
and never once look around you. You find yourself in a beautiful place and you take pictures
#
one after another, even high definition video so that you don't lose a moment. And in doing
#
so you don't even get to live the moment. One thing I'd like to do more of in the time
#
that I have left is be present in the moment. Pay attention. Pay attention to all the sensations
#
around me. Pay attention to the people around me who might not be there tomorrow when it
#
will be too late. And one of the things I should pay attention to is my own body. What
#
is it telling me? What am I doing wrong? And also what food am I putting into it? I mean
#
this is my body. The soul only exists as a metaphor. My body is all of me. So what I
#
put into it should be a big, big deal. Is it a big deal for you? How deeply have you
#
thought about the food that you eat?
#
Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen, our weekly podcast on economics, politics and behavioral
#
science. Please welcome your host, Amit Verma. Welcome to the Seen and the Unseen. My guest
#
today is Nandita Aiyar, famous food writer and author of the wonderful new book, Every
#
Day Superfoods. Nandita is a medical doctor who was an early food blogger and then took
#
her passion for food and writing into Instagram, YouTube and columns and books. Her writing
#
about food has both conceptual clarity and practical utility. And in this conversation,
#
we shoot the breeze about a lot more than that. Like all the rest of us, Nandita contains
#
multitudes and this episode reveals aspects of her that will be shocking to many, including
#
how her friends once cut open a human skull while singing Happy Birthday to her. And also
#
we have a bit of music at the start of the conversation. So if you listen to this podcast
#
at a higher speed, as you should, you might need to come to One X just for that. But first,
#
let's take a quick commercial break. These days I have taken to preaching the virtues
#
of mindfulness and there is nothing we should be more mindful of than human behavior. One
#
of the great books I have read in recent times is Behave by Robert Sapolsky and many of his
#
incredible insights are now available to you for free. Head on over to the sponsors of
#
this episode, The Great Courses Plus at thegreatcoursesplus.com and check out a course taught by Sapolsky
#
called Biology and Human Behavior, The Neurological Origins of Individuality. In 24 riveting online
#
lectures, Sapolsky takes us through the neurology of the brain, how hormones can shape us, how
#
behavior evolved, the role of genes, what studying animals tells us about ourselves
#
and so on. Sapolsky is one of the great thinkers of our times. And this is just one of the
#
many great courses on this aptly named site. The Great Courses Plus has a fantastic library
#
of online courses from subjects ranging from music, math, cooking, history, political theory
#
and much else. They also have an app where you can listen to the audio of these courses
#
the same way you are listening to this podcast now. And it will cost you nothing. You get
#
one month of unlimited free access if you use the following URL, thegreatcoursesplus.com
#
slash unseen. That's right, unseen, thegreatcoursesplus.com slash unseen for one month of unlimited
#
free access. Sign up now.
#
Nandita, welcome to the Scene and the Unseen.
#
Thank you, Amit. Having been a listener for quite some time, it's absolute pleasure and
#
honor to be on your show.
#
Thank you. Having read you for so many years, it's an honor to have you on and absolutely
#
about time. Even if it is on the occasion of this wonderful book you've written, Everyday
#
Superfoods, you know, you should have been on earlier in the past. But I'm going to kind
#
of start this with an unusual request because I have just discovered, as recently as yesterday,
#
that you sing as well, that you're studying Hindustani classical music. So why don't you
#
sing a little bit of some song that counts as your comfort song, that in difficult times,
#
some songs that brings you peace?
#
That would be great. And I'm happy. I think I'll be the first person to be singing on
#
your show. So I'm very happy to be doing that. And just a second, I'll start my Tanpura
#
in the background. So I know what scale to sing at.
#
So I'm just going to sing a couple of lines from a Bandish that I'm learning currently
#
in Raag Yaman. And Raag Yaman is like the most primary Raag that people start learning
#
when they learn Hindustani classical music. But it's also like, it's nothing primary
#
that it's extremely deep and people can actually learn it for a decade and still not have learned
#
enough. So that's a little bit about the Raag.
#
So I'm just going to sing a couple of lines from a Bandish that I'm learning right now.
#
So I'm just going to sing a couple of lines from a Bandish that I'm learning right now.
#
Yeah, that was lovely. I mean, I don't really understand Hindustani classical music, but
#
that was so soothing. And you know, maybe at the end of the episode, if you have the
#
energy, we'll do a bit of that. My mom was a Hindustani classical musician, by the way.
#
And she died, I think, 12 and a half years ago, so to say. And it's very interesting.
#
I was kind of reading through your book and your food memories and all of that. And I
#
was thinking how, you know, at different parts of your life, the kind of food that you eat
#
or the things that you drink are so connected to memories that you have, you know, so I
#
could, you know, when I think of what is sort of my comfort food, my mind immediately goes
#
back to a few things. My mother used to cook in my childhood in the 1980s, you know, one
#
of her delicacies being something called fishala keev. And I've never quite had fishala keev
#
like that anywhere else. But that, of course, is how it is. Food is so imbued with memories.
#
And one of the things I kind of liked about your writing is a recognition of the personal
#
that your food writing isn't dry. It is not like these are the recipes and these are the
#
ingredients and this has vitamins and this has that. And this is how you make it together.
#
But you know, so much of your writing is also interspersed with the personal that which
#
is quite charming. But so I will, you know, I, of course, do begin all my shows with the
#
personal, but there's all the more reason to do so here as well. So take me back to
#
your childhood, which is, of course, you know, in the city where I have lived in for more
#
than a couple of decades. Tell me about, you know, growing up in Bombay, what that was
#
like early memories of food, if there are early memories of food, because I don't want
#
to commit the danger of, you know, just because you are such a prominent food writer and all
#
that, of just associating you with food, ask everything about food. I don't want to do
#
that. People contain multitudes, as I like saying on the show. Tell me about your childhood.
#
How was it growing up in Bombay? What was your family like?
#
So I was a seventies kid and I was born in Bombay, like you said. And my three generations
#
like right from my great grandparents, who had moved to Bombay in 1930s, early 1930s.
#
And then of course, my grandparents and my parents and then me. So I'm like, though
#
I'm Tamil, but I'm fourth generation Mumbaikar. And yeah, so I was the first in my generation
#
both from my paternal side and the maternal side. So both my parents being the eldest
#
kids, I was the first in my generation. While, you know, I was pampered a lot and like, of
#
course, like the first child in any like generation is always most welcomed. And it's the novelty.
#
Like people are literally looking at diapers after 20 years, you know. So I also, I was
#
living with my grandparents, my three maternal aunts. And while my mom and dad were in the
#
same city, they both were working. So I was brought up by my grandparents and my aunts
#
essentially. And my mom used to come over on weekends, etc. And we had this kind of
#
different arrangement for those days because it was not very common. But I would have a
#
tough time explaining to friends like where is your mother? How do you have five mothers?
#
Like, you know, three aunts, one mom and one grandmom. Strong feminine influence around
#
me. And like, where are your parents? They hardly come for any school days. So that was
#
my childhood. And I think over a period of time, I got used to answering those questions
#
and dealing with that my life is different from other kids who live in these nuclear
#
families, just parents and kids or a sibling. And my sister is 10 years younger to me. So
#
for the longest time, I was a single child all through my childhood. And that I think
#
that also played a big role in shaping who I am today. Because one, growing up with grandparents,
#
there is that kind of undeniable generation gap, where you want to do something and you
#
know, you are a bit wired, then they don't want they have very strict rules. Also being
#
this, you know, Tamil family. But although we were in Bombay, I think I had a more conservative
#
upbringing than people's stories I hear about in tier two and tier three cities. I think
#
even their parents were like little more aspirational thing. Yeah, be modern, wear jeans, you know,
#
have boyfriends and stuff, which it was never the case in my house is very strict. So going
#
back to actually I want to go back to my great grandparents moving to Bombay, because that's
#
a story I really like. And, you know, I find it interesting, how did you guys just suddenly
#
pack up and come here from, you know, Tamil Nadu and I had the privilege of having my
#
great grandmother in my life, even when my son was born. So she's, she lived to 85 86.
#
So we actually have a five generation picture of my great grandmother, my grandmother, my
#
mother, me and my son. So I was telling my son, if you were a daughter, we would have
#
been five generations of women together. But yeah, it's okay, I'll be I won't complain.
#
Yeah, so my great grandparents, my great grandfather moved to Bombay first to look for prospects
#
and all he already had three daughters by then in, in a small town in Tamil Nadu. And
#
he came to Bombay because also he knew that a lot of people had migrated from there. So
#
he stayed with a cousin who lived near Ruya College somewhere. He stayed like for a couple
#
of months and he had actually done MA in English and history. So there was no way that he would
#
find a job of any, you know, relevance in the small town in Tamil Nadu. And he said,
#
Okay, this is a good place for me to find look, I'm looking for a job. I have three
#
daughters to support and I need to do something with my life. So he stayed in this cousin's
#
place for a month or two. And then he got a job with Western Railways. And then the best
#
option to find a place was Matunga or King Circle because there was already the set community,
#
people speaking your language, you know, the vegetable vendors selling your kind of sub
#
zis, temples. So like that whole ecosystem was kind of set up for someone migrating to
#
such a big city even in 1930s like Bombay was the kind of an intimidating city for someone
#
who's never been outside the village before. So they found this small apartment in King
#
Circle. And you know, I often ask my mom and aunts about these stories. So they said that
#
in those days, this two rent board would be hanging from the trees and outside the buildings
#
and the rent was 1930s and the rent was around five rupees a month. And my great grandfather's
#
salary in those days was around 30 rupees and he had like three and he had three children
#
to support and pay the house rent and the school fees and everything right. So the funny
#
thing was that anytime that two rent board changed into like someone offering even like
#
a four rupee 50 paisa people would just pick up their stuff and move to the next possible
#
house because there were hardly any furniture in those days, hardly any possessions except
#
for your cooking utensils, two, three pairs of clothes and a sack of coal, which was your
#
supply to run the kitchen for the month. And that was all. And my mom and my aunts tell
#
me that this was the situation in most families. But surprisingly, these guys never moved.
#
They stayed in the same apartment for over 50 years. And even I have been there and I
#
have stayed there with them and I have good memories of that place. And even after they
#
moved out of that place, I used to go back and hang around there just, you know, for
#
the kicks of nostalgia and getting all sentimental about the place where my family first came
#
into Bombay. So I asked my mom other than the cultural reason why Ma Tunga and King
#
Circle. So she said in those days that was the cheaper kind of available option given
#
the salary that Tata was earning. And also that, you know, having a self contained house
#
with a bathroom inside the house was also a very big deal in those days. And those houses
#
were quite expensive to rent. And this given that it was only five rupees a month, it was
#
five rupees a month, not only, but it was still a good amount for having a bathroom
#
in the house when you have three daughters and you have a bigger family. You don't want
#
to risk, you know, not having a bathroom in the house. So that was the other reason. And
#
I found it like, wow, I mean, you know, it fills me with the kind of feeling that I can't
#
really explain how things were at that time. And because I've lived so much with my grandparents,
#
I used to hear a lot of stories from them about their times in early Bombay. The one
#
thing that I know firsthand is that my mother's cousin brother, who's also my great grandparents
#
grandson, he would often tell my great grandparents that you guys, you have lived in Matunga for
#
50 years, but you would never learn proper Hindi or Marathi. And all the sabzi walas
#
have learned Tamil and they call you when you go buying vegetables that, you know, they
#
will name all the vegetables in Tamil saying, Amma, you're not taking this vegetable today.
#
So that was like the standing joke in our family that how much of the Tamil culture
#
they infused into the UP people, the Bihar people, the Gujaratis, like everybody just
#
became a part of that Tamil culture going to temples and everything just became part
#
of their DNA purely because it was such a cultural hub of Tamilians in Bombay. So that's
#
about my great grandparents. And then my grandfather had a government job and with the central
#
government. And so I was born in the house where he had a quarters in Napian sea road.
#
And it was this big, beautiful house facing the Arabian sea. And those days the Priyadarshini
#
park had not yet come up. It came up just when we left that house. So it was this unobstructed
#
view of the sea. And I was so spoiled. I would say, what is this? Every day I wake up, I
#
only see the sea view. I mean, little did I know that, you know, I would kill for such
#
a view later on in my life, but talk about having something at your disposal every day
#
and you don't have the value for that at all. Like especially in the monsoons, the,
#
you couldn't even open the balcony door because the winds would come howling inside and push
#
the door back. So those are the memories I have of growing up in Napian sea road. And
#
I didn't know that this was literally the creme de la creme area to live in Bombay for
#
me. Yeah, it was just a house and it was just a place in Bombay. I had no idea about the
#
suburbs and you know, the different hierarchies. It was fun. It was like this huge quarters,
#
government quarters, lots of families of, you know, different languages, religions.
#
It was like a melting pot. And it was no longer just like a Tamil hub. There was this temple
#
and lots of friends to play with. So that was the first 10 years of my life. And I attended
#
school somewhere there near Chowpatty. I was always like quite a studious kid also because
#
I didn't, I was not a very outdoorsy kid and I was not the one to be playing out all the
#
time. So my, mostly I would be studying reading or learning music or mostly indoor kind of
#
things to do. And so then I would, without much effort, I would be in the top one, two,
#
three ranks in school. I don't think anybody ever bothered about it in my house. They said,
#
yeah, okay, your exams, you're studying. And because my mom would sometimes come on the
#
weekends before my exam to coach me on some, ask, do some mock test and all with me because
#
they said, what is this girl doing? Nobody knows whether she's studying or not studying.
#
So just to keep a little bit of a watch on me and we would do these things. I don't know.
#
Am I supposed to go on and on?
#
Yeah, no, I'll ask you a lot more because yeah, all this is so fascinating to me. And
#
I was, I was actually, you know, I live in Andheri. So I was thinking, yeah, okay, humble
#
beginnings in Matunga, but suddenly you said Nepean sea road and Nepean sea road is so
#
posh, by the way, for people who don't know Bombay that I've never even been there in
#
more than 20 years because I don't have posh friends. It is super posh. I was, I was struck
#
by, you know, I'm really glad that you spoke about your great grandparents because one
#
of the things that sort of struck me and it's something that I was, I've been kind of thinking
#
about recently because I have to move house soon. As soon as the lockdown gets over and
#
the situation gets better. And I was just thinking of all the things we have to shift
#
and how many of them seem to be, you know, needless, just things that you accumulate
#
over the sort of the decades. And you know, the thousands of books even feel like extremely
#
out of place because, you know, I do most of my reading on the Kindle or on the laptop
#
and all of that. It's very striking and something that we may not think about or take for granted
#
that the things you mentioned that they used to shift with were, you know, you mentioned
#
cooking utensils first. So you have your cooking utensils and then whatever clothes you have
#
and that's pretty much it. Well, today, you know, in our modern worlds, we love so much
#
furniture, so much electronics, so many books, so many curios and artifacts and all of that.
#
And yet at a time cooking utensils are so fundamental. Like I remember I did an episode
#
with Anshul Malhotra on partition where she's done this beautiful book on objects that people
#
bring with them from partition. And in many cases they were utensils because when people
#
ran away from home, that was the one thing they took with them, partly for practical
#
reasons, of course, because, you know, you may have to cook your own food while you're
#
on the road and it's good to have something to cook it in because, you know, obviously
#
you can't take some dal in your palm and hold that over the fire. But did food and cooking,
#
was it ever something that ever interested you? Did you have to learn to cook when you
#
were a kid, especially when you were in a joint family with five mothers, so to say
#
three aunts, one grandmom, one mom? Was the kitchen a different kind of space? Like today,
#
you know, in our experience of say nuclear households, the kitchen isn't such a big
#
deal. But I can imagine that in a large joint family, the kitchen would have played a different
#
kind of role where almost a community space as it were. Do you have memories of any of
#
that? Or is food just something that, you know, you ate absentmindedly while growing
#
up and didn't really think about?
#
Yeah, it's a very good question. And, you know, I get asked this quite a bit because
#
people want to know if I was always into cooking and did I start early? See, because having
#
so many women in the house and like I said, I was the first child in my generation. I
#
was not expected to enter the kitchen at all. In fact, if I even entered the kitchen, I
#
would be shooed away saying go read, go practice music or do something worthwhile. Don't waste
#
your time in the kitchen. That was what was told to me. And despite the fact that, like
#
I said, they were very traditional and conservative. But I think it's something about this being
#
in Bombay, a very aspirational city that there was this subtle thing that you had to do something
#
great in your life, you know, no matter what. So you need to focus on building those skills
#
and that though I never was overtly pressured to do anything like nobody ever scolded me
#
if I didn't get first rank. But I did have that pressure on myself since I was very young.
#
I don't know, be it something like a competitive spirit or if I do something, I want to excel
#
at it. I don't want to be in the middle. Like if I put in effort, I need to see some
#
good results for that. So yeah, so I never I hardly ever entered the kitchen. And like
#
even my grandfather, I even remember as late as, you know, in before 12th standard, I was
#
attending these classes in Dadar, Agarwal classes to study maths and physics and stuff
#
to, you know, get good marks in the 12th science exams. And those days we were living in Mulund.
#
And I just take the local train leave home at around 530am. So I could reach the class
#
at seven o'clock when it started in the morning. And my grandfather would wake up at five and
#
he would like standard two slices of bread with jam and butter, a glass of milk or whatever.
#
It would be there for me ready when I got up at five, gulp it down. So five to get ready
#
and five thirty out of the house and he would take me to the bus stop and then I would take
#
the train etc. So there was nowhere expected that I had to do this on my own. Like even
#
my grandfather would do these things for me. Their priorities were very clear. You have
#
to study well and you have to do something good with your life. And also for them, it
#
was like a kitchen was like, what are you going to do in the kitchen? How is it going
#
to help your life in any way? And maybe later on, when you're independent, anyway, you'll
#
have to be wasting your time here. So might as well don't do it now when there are so
#
many of us to handle. And in my family also, because they were so traditional, they were
#
very exacting requirements of how everything has to be made. So there was no place for
#
a person like me with no real knowledge about what exactly is going into anything. And if
#
I come, they think I'm only going to mess up something. So that was the other reason
#
I was not allowed. And like they were so super careful. Every time they were making these
#
like say Diwali sweets or some festival things, they would keep the gas on the floor and my
#
grandmother would sit on the floor and make all these things because it's tough to keep
#
standing for like two and three hours and you know, do it on the standing counter. So
#
when that used to happen, when I was a much younger child, they would literally draw like
#
a Laxman Rekha outside the kitchen and say you're not supposed to cross this. And I
#
would have all these insane super aromas coming to me. And I could not even cross the line
#
and go into the kitchen because they were worried that there's this whole plan of boiling
#
oil and you know, they wouldn't trust me to be safe around that. So those are the things
#
that I remember and the other very fond memories like these Diwali times when my aunts, even
#
much later on my grandmother, they would all sit on the floor. You know, that was like
#
a very unique and fun situation because usually that cooking was so mechanical and you know,
#
one person standing on the counter and finishing off the things. But this seemed like such
#
a community fun exercise, they'll be gossiping about something or the other. And I would
#
feel like I'm missing out on all the fun because I'm not even allowed to go inside.
#
So I grew up not knowing much about cooking at all. And I think when I was 10 or something,
#
I learned to make a dosa from my grandmother, like standing on the stool and you know, learning
#
how it's made. That's because I kind of liked that process and it felt a bit like a craft
#
fun kind of project to do. So that's one thing I learned. I knew to make tea. And that's
#
about it. I knew nothing else growing up. I just went to college with only this much
#
knowledge about cooking.
#
Yeah. And one of the things that you said that struck me and I'm just thinking aloud
#
here is that perhaps you were given this push because you were in Bombay and it was this
#
feeling of that. Hey, we're in Bombay. It's an opportunity. So don't let it go to waste.
#
And you know, which might not have been the case in a smaller town. And I think as an
#
extension of that, I wonder if one could then say that a lot of parents who themselves have
#
come up the hard way, who had to fight for everything, who perhaps just because of the
#
times, but perhaps because they've actually moved their way up, that because they've had
#
to fight all the way and now they can, you know, offer their kid more opportunities.
#
They pressurize their kids so much because they feel that it's now almost obligatory
#
to make use of the opportunities that they never had. And I wonder if there's something
#
similar at play. So tell me something in these years growing up as you were where you are
#
both, you know, in a traditional family where in a sense you're rooted, but also you're
#
driven, you're ambitious, you're doing things, you're going to Agarwal's classes and all
#
of that. And you're a science kid and a good student, neither of which I ever was. So what
#
what's your conception of yourself at this time? Like you did go on to become a medical
#
doctor and we'll chat about that more. But at this point in time, as you're growing up
#
in your through your childhood and through your teens and as you're getting to college,
#
what's your conception of yourself? Do you have fantasies about what you will do later
#
on in life? Are there anything you could call either ambitions or dreams? Or are you just
#
kind of going with the flow and just trying to excel in whatever is immediately in front
#
of you, which could be the exams or other world's classes or whatever?
#
This is such a question that it's really making me introspect. I have never thought about
#
this myself, to be honest. And I knew coming as a guest on your podcast is going to make
#
me think a lot about myself and discover some things which I had not really given a thought
#
to earlier. You know, when I was born, I was born in that Nepean Sea Road house, like I
#
told you, our neighbors, their eldest daughter was a was an IAS officer. And on the 11th
#
day or 12th day, they have this cradle ceremony for the baby. And in my house, because I was
#
the first kid, there was no earlier cradles in the house to put me in. So they borrowed
#
this cradle from the next door neighbor that belonged to the lady who was already grown
#
up by then. She was the IAS officer and already in those days. So they were all saying you
#
are going to become an IAS officer. That was like something that was drilled into me. I
#
didn't even know what was IAS officer. But I clearly remember that term from very early
#
on in childhood, like maybe when I was three or four, I knew that there's something like
#
this IAS officer and my folks want me to become that. So that was the earliest thing of anything
#
related to a career that I ever, you know, even came across that, that you may have this
#
choice later on in life that what to do in life. You know, when I was in grade three
#
and four, in our school, in the report card, I would always get this my budding scientists,
#
something like that, teachers would write a comment. And I think at that age, these
#
kind of words, somehow, see, I'm right now I'm almost 45. And I still remember those
#
words that were written in my report card. So I think when teachers write something like
#
that, and especially if the teachers you like, write a comment like that on your report card,
#
it's somewhere just plays on your mind and you feel wow, I am capable of this. And it
#
gives you that push and that sense that that is possible, you know, so I think that also
#
stayed on my mind that maybe I'm supposed to do science, maybe that's good for me. But
#
at the same time, I also loved writing early on as a kid, like, I had a lot of me time
#
lot of boredom because I didn't have a sibling for the longest time. And I stayed with my
#
grandparents. And I didn't have too many friends. So all my spare time was like spent
#
doing writing something must be quite silly. But I used to write and like small poems and
#
all I my mama still preserved some diary sometime and embarrassing, embarrassingly, she shows
#
it to me. I said, please, I don't want to see it now. So I would keep writing and you
#
know, my aunts and my mom would also say you're good at this, maybe you know, it's something.
#
It's not not something I ever thought about myself. But there's a lot of little external
#
influences that unknowingly just settle down in the different, you know, levels of your
#
head and you feel maybe this maybe that I definitely loved English, I loved words, and
#
I loved the language. And I said maybe this is this will make me happy. But in those days
#
also there was a thing that you know, if you got the least marks in colleges where you
#
went to arts by default. So the thing was you get a 95 plus you have you don't even
#
have to think you're going into science somewhere like 70s you're going to commerce 50s you're
#
going to ask and as stupid as that may sound today, but that was how things were for 70s
#
kids. We didn't really have any other options. And for girls, oh, you like a good, you know,
#
feminine instinct and also medicine is good for you and boys you like straight away engineering.
#
You were not expected to think so much there was nothing like career counseling and what
#
is good for you? What's your aptitude? Nothing of that sort. I think I was always going with
#
the flow I never really thought too much into it and neither did my family put like too
#
much thought like what is she going to do? And they just thought whatever she does she'll
#
do it. Okay, like I was pretty self motivated and driven. So they didn't really bother about
#
what I'm going to do in my life. And neither did I think about it to be honest. So you
#
know, I did an episode with Sharda Ogra recently and in that Sharda was talking about how she
#
was a 70s kid and I was saying I'm an 80s kid. And the interesting thing is that you know,
#
you just gave your age away and I've realized I'm a little older than you and yet you are
#
describing yourself as a 70s kid, which I don't do because I don't really remember I
#
was I was I was too much of a kid in the 70s to remember any of it. So I think of myself
#
more as an 80s kid because that is where my memories of kiddery were. But I'm struck by
#
a phrase that you use here, which is something that you know, was not even a phrase back
#
in the day because it was default and it today is very much a phrase which is me time. You
#
know, back in the day we had no me time because you know, we have no laptops, we have no internet,
#
we have no cell phones, we have nothing. You know, if you're lucky, we have some books
#
around us. But even even for a regular reader, how much can you read? So you you kind of
#
do get a lot of me time that way and I know exactly what that's like. So tell me a little
#
bit about what kind of books did you read and what kind of writing did you do? Like
#
firstly, everything we write as children is obviously cringe worthy later if you're going
#
to look at it with adult eyes. Obviously, it's not going to pass standard. No, you should
#
see what I wrote as a kid. But nevertheless, so what what were the kind of books that you
#
read in those days? And what kind of writing did you like to do? You know, I have memories
#
of this book, a bookshop in Nepean Sea Road. I think it was called Shobana. I'm not very
#
sure. But I remember going there like every fortnight with my grandfather. And I've just
#
opened that door. And this gush of cool, very nice smelling air conditioning would hit my
#
face. And that itself was like so welcoming. And that was just like one of the many pleasures
#
to be had when you enter that store. Those were still my fairy tale and those kind of
#
book reading days. So I would pick up one book and it was it was a store not a library.
#
So whatever my grandfather bought within 10 minutes of coming home, I would have finished
#
reading that. And he said, Okay, now you either read the same book again and again, until
#
I take you back. Or you read something else. So don't come and tell me it's finished. So
#
take your time with it. So I think that that really made me eager, made me an eager reader
#
just like taking me to the bookstore as a treat. You know, a lot of summer holidays
#
and holidays because I was living with my grandparents, I would be shooed off to my
#
great grandparents house during the holidays because I have to go somewhere I can't stay
#
in the same place forever. And holiday time you have to shift and you know, spend time
#
with your other relatives or do something that's what we used to do in like we had
#
nothing else fancy to do in our days. My great grandfather was a voracious reader, like even
#
like whatever newspaper that he used to read literally end to end every word. And sometimes
#
he would be lazing on in his easy chair. And he would say that okay, this full page you
#
have to read to me now. And I would keep watching like is he asleep? Can I stop reading because
#
he doesn't seem to be listening to anything. And sometimes it used to be about politics
#
and like, absolutely the kind of subjects that you may not be interested in at all or
#
it makes no sense to you. But he just wanted you to read it to know that there are all
#
these different words and all this different vocabulary. And sometimes he would make me
#
like read something complicated and say now write this very simply, you know, in one page
#
or something. So that's that's the kind of vacation fun quote unquote that we had. And
#
also the big thing that made me interested in these things that when I used to go there
#
during my holidays, I was out of my comfort zone. I didn't have my familiar books and
#
toys and whatever, you know, things that I was comfortable doing in my free time. So
#
I had to find out new things to do. And they had this balcony and in that King Circle apartment
#
complex, they were like four or five buildings and in between there was this big courtyard
#
kind of space with a water tank and all that. And every afternoon, a bunch of cows would
#
come and sit there for relaxation. So these cows will be sitting there and swatting flies
#
and generally like chilled out. And you can't imagine I've like watched them for hours on
#
end to kill my time because I had nothing better to do. And other thing was all because
#
that was like the open courtyard where all the other buildings could see what's happening.
#
All the vendors would come there right from salt guy to banana guy, vegetable guy. And
#
my other favourite pastime was to mimic all their calls. And because you know, there this
#
balcony level was like say to the level of my shoulder or something. So I could I would
#
just mimic the call back and hide under that thing. So they would like wonder where is
#
the sound coming from? And at the lower level, there were these jallies. So I could see that
#
he's wondering where is the sound coming from? These were the kind of creative vacation pastimes
#
that I had because there was no one else to play with. And it's a new place and I had
#
I used to always take too much time making any friends. So it's not the place where
#
I live regularly. So I would not go out and play with I said, I don't know these people,
#
I can't go. So this was, you know, all part of this creative process and a way in which
#
boredom really spurs on your creativity to do something nice because you're so bored
#
out of your skull. And you say okay, let me do something fun. You know, let me write or
#
let me draw something or let me create something. And later on, I think I read the philosopher
#
J Krishnamurthy has written something very similar that boredom is the best way to creativity.
#
And I was like, well, I knew this from my childhood. So I mean, I don't really remember
#
what books I specifically read. But a lot of fairy tales, Grimm's, you know, some inspirational
#
autobiographies. And then later on, of course, when I became a teenager, I read all the usual
#
paperbacks that Sidney Sheldon, Daniels, Teal, everything that was available in India. Yeah,
#
I never read a Mills and Boon though, for the simple reason that I found that it's too
#
small. I'll finish it too quickly. So I don't even want to get into this. So I was reading
#
the usual novels, fiction. I was not much into nonfiction. I would love medical fiction
#
Excellent. You know, and you know, speaking of boredom being a sport of creativity, there's
#
also the saying about an idle mind being a devil's workshop. But that that courtyard
#
sounds so fascinating. It sounds like a kind of a setting for an urban Malgudi days as
#
it were. And indeed, you know, courtyards do have a special place in some Indian literature
#
as well, because almost like a gathering place of sorts. And the other sort of thread that
#
I instantly connected with, and I don't know if it's it's probably going to be a shared
#
memory only for people of our generation is when you brought books and air conditioning
#
together. You know, you mentioned that you used to go to that store, whatever it was
#
in Appian C Road, and the door would open and it blasts off AC. And I remember when
#
I was in college in Ferguson College, Pune, I used to spend my afternoons at the British
#
Council library there on FC Road, pretending to read books, but actually combining my love
#
for books with my love for air conditioning. So stuff that, you know, perhaps a future
#
generation may take for granted, you know, unless there is a solar flare or something
#
and there is no electricity. And then they'll suddenly say, huh, what was that we just went
#
when they realize the importance of the internet and the electricity, but I'm sounding too
#
much like an old fogey now. So tell me more about doing medical because on the one hand
#
in this and you know, in previous interviews, you've kind of spoken about how you sort
#
of wandered into doing medical because that was what was expected from a good student
#
who were getting the kind of marks that you were. But on the other hand, you clearly had
#
the aptitude and the bent of mind that a doctor actually needs. And that bent of mind actually
#
comes through in pretty much everything you have done since as well from what I can see,
#
which is, you know, sort of organized, systematic, going deeper and deeper into sort of first
#
principles, root causes, all of that. So tell me a little bit about what that process of
#
doing medical was like. Did you, you know, was it natural for you? Was it easy for you?
#
Was it something that interested you? And was it something that you saw yourself doing
#
for the rest of your life? What was all of that like?
#
I was always going with the flow and I had really not given a thought as to what career
#
I want to pursue. And I got marks good enough to get a seat in a medical college in Bombay.
#
And maybe if it was not in Bombay, and if it was some rural area, my family would have
#
thought twice about sending me away from this very sheltered existence of the last 17 years.
#
But it was very much in Bombay and I didn't have to stay in a hostel and things like that.
#
So I took admission in that. But I really didn't know what that life would be like.
#
And how would it be to study medicine? How would it be to practice medicine? One thing
#
I definitely knew that it required a lot of dedication, commitment and sacrifice to practice
#
medicine unless you are in a very specific branch, like say pathology, but you could
#
still get away with fixed working hours. But if you were to practice medicine or surgery,
#
then definitely you had to be available all the time. And when I joined, I said, you know,
#
yeah, if I do this, I'm going to do it well. I am going to dedicate my life to being a
#
good doctor if I get into medical college. It's not just, you know, studying for the
#
heck of it, because now that I have got a seat, I'm going to make the best of it.
#
You know, there's this incident that happened when I joined medical college. It was the
#
year of the Mandal Commission and the admissions had got very delayed. So, you know, in my
#
times, the first year MBBS, second MBBS and third MBBS were one and a half, one and a
#
half, one and a half years each. So a total of four and a half years of studies and one
#
year of internship. So that was five and a half years to graduate. So now in this one
#
and a half years, we had already joined six months late because of the delay in the admission
#
process when people were still figuring out what kind of admissions to happen, et cetera.
#
So but the first MBBS is also a huge learning, like within the first year itself, your vocabulary
#
goes up by some 10,000 words because you're learning the kind of language which we don't
#
even use as laypeople and just that kind of adjustment to seeing certain things in such
#
a stark light, which was like a sheltered existence like me. I've never been exposed
#
to anything. And day one of medical college, there is maybe a little bit of some orientation
#
or something. You'll have these many classes, you'll have to get this much percentage.
#
This is the past percentage, some very basic orientation. And then, you know, you're told
#
to come to the anatomy hall. So now there are 50 girls and 50 boys, 100 kids in a class
#
and a good like 50-50 gender distribution there. And okay, you just wander into the
#
anatomy hall. And first, you're hit by that smell of formalin, which literally makes you
#
tear up. And like, where am I come with someone like, you know, throwing gas, some kind of
#
poisonous gas on my face. By the time you recover from that, you realize there are tables
#
and tables of naked dead bodies that you're staring at, because it's a dissection hall.
#
So all the unclaimed corpses are there. And here you are with a bunch of boys and girls
#
that you've never met before in your life. And you're facing this scene, which is like,
#
it's like a shock like I cannot explain. I don't think I've been so shocked in my life
#
ever. Maybe today's kids may not feel that way, but we were still very innocent growing
#
up and we didn't have any exposure to any such gory stuff on TV or, you know, like Netflix
#
that kids now they just see and they brush off. But for someone like me, and I could
#
definitely tell it was the same for the boys and the girls in my class. And it was like
#
a big, big shock. So that was like day one, you feel like where have I come, you know,
#
and so that that smell and the sight and that general embarrassment and everything put together.
#
So that was like, and there were other classes like in biochemistry and physiology, but
#
this is the one that stuck to me. And I will never forget that experience of that first
#
day. But we also adapt to something strange like this so quickly. The new normal as it
#
were exactly that new normal. And within like a couple of months, we got used to seeing
#
our anatomy professors, late ho gaya, they will open their dabba on that very dissection
#
table and start eating their lunch. And we would not cringe to see that also, like, you
#
know, there's this dead body cut open in different stages. And, you know, cadaver to call it
#
by the scientific term and somebody just eating their lunch very coolly and like sharing Do
#
you want to eat this and that's also not advisable, right? Because it's not to be honest, but
#
I mean, maybe I'm exaggerating a little bit, but even holding it in your hand with this
#
view, but it's not very different from us watching absolutely gory stuff on Netflix
#
and you know, eating our food in today's times, we still do that, right? So but that that
#
also we got used to that. And I think the other very, very good memory of this whole
#
anatomy thing that I was still getting used to that it was my birthday. And, you know,
#
we spent three three months dissecting each like one is HFN, which is head, face and neck,
#
then what we call supex, the arms, then chest and abdomen and then the lower extremities.
#
So in the head, face and neck, one very important component is the brain, where with a with
#
a bone cutting machine, the skull is cut open and then they remove the brain and we are,
#
you know, we understand what is in the transfer section of each of the levels on the human
#
brain, right? So it was my birthday, and we were cutting the brain and everybody sang
#
happy birthday to me. It was, I think about it now, it was very amusing then. But I think
#
about it nothing. Are we crazy or what? Like, you know, but but I think that's the beauty
#
of medical school, you learn to see fun. And you because your general life is so, you know,
#
full of fat books, so much to study so much to learn, you're seeing disease, you're seeing
#
people in the worst stages of their life. But you learn to see some humor in things
#
like these, which keep you going. I think it provided some kind of, you know, soothing
#
moments for the constantly under stress. And as a kid who was into every possible non sporting
#
extracurricular activity, like music or drawing or drama or anything, I had to give up everything
#
when I joined medicine. So that was also very here. I mean, I had given up in 12th standard
#
itself because I had to make the most of time and study etc. So that also felt very, I can't
#
say depressing, but it felt like I had lost some of the fun in my life because these were
#
the things I really enjoyed doing. And so that's how we learn to make the most of these
#
moments, even in medical college when things felt like, you know, gloomy and you were it
#
was a tough, I remember that time. And I remember that it did feel quite stressful because it
#
was a huge jump getting used to regular science based college where you just learned physics,
#
chemistry, biology to learning about humans, disease, checking patients and, you know,
#
hearing their stories. And after all, imagine we're just 17 years old, just kids, right?
#
I think in India, we start this so early in our foreign countries, you have to finish
#
your some full graduation and then start studying medicine. So here you can, if you pass all
#
your years in one shot, you can well become a medical graduate at 22, which is very young
#
to kind of grasp the seriousness, the realities and the kind of things that accompany this
#
very serious kind of study. So these are my memories. And yeah, I did well. Like I said,
#
the initial part of getting used to these things was a struggle. Until then I could
#
somehow my school and college I could get through without studying much. I would just,
#
you know, pay attention in class and I could manage to get good marks in the exams. But
#
this one, some real effort had to go into reading so much. The books were so, so huge,
#
so heavy that you wouldn't even carry them anywhere. You had to go where the book was.
#
The book couldn't come, you couldn't carry the book to you. But it did instill in me
#
a certain kind of discipline of, you know, I used to wake up at 3am. I think that's when
#
I started becoming a morning person. So if I had to leave for college at around 7, I
#
would study from 3 to 6. Because again, college was a train ride away and you were exhausted
#
when you came back home. You couldn't really focus on studying at that point of time. So
#
morning is when I felt this is the only time I can put in some time to study. I had a natural
#
liking for surgery because since childhood, I love to do things, create things and not
#
just speculate about, okay, maybe will this work? Will that work? So just get into the
#
middle of the problem and solve it. And I always thought that I will pursue surgery
#
in some form or the other. And I really liked it. Like think of it as a like a stitching
#
or something, but in a very complex scenario where someone's life depends on it, right?
#
I loved surgery, but also liked medicine for the logic of it. Like a lot of things in medicine
#
are very logical. If you understand certain basic principles, even without knowing pathophysiology
#
of a particular disease, you can kind of interpret that this is how the things will progress.
#
And that kind of application of logic, I loved that in medicine. I absolutely hated gynaec.
#
I would like try to bunk every possible lecture without getting into trouble and just watching
#
women screaming and that kind of thing was not my cup of tea at all. So my first choice
#
was surgery and second choice was medicine. But again, I had not finalized anything in
#
my head. I said, I'll see how it goes and take it as it comes. And in my final year
#
MBBS, I got the results and I was declared failed. And for someone who's been a topper
#
all my life, it's good that I'm reasonably strong mentally. Otherwise, I don't know
#
what would have been my reaction to that. I just, I just couldn't believe that something
#
like this could happen. And of course, immediately I sent my papers for reevaluation. I had been
#
declared fail in medicine. Now out of 1500 marks in final MBBS, 500 is medicine. That's
#
like one third of the entire curriculum, which I have to restudy if I'm not declared pass
#
in the reval. And just the thought of going back to those books was like terrifying. I
#
just, I said, I had already done a good job studying in the first place. Why am I supposed
#
to do this all over again? And you know, this was Bombay University and the center for all
#
these corrections and these admin work was in Kali now. So literally every three, four
#
days I would land up there and I would sit on that guy's head and saying, where is my
#
paper? Where's my reval? I've not got it. The next exam is nearing the re-examination.
#
Right. And kind of I developed a rapport with that guy and he also started sympathizing
#
saying this girl, you know, she's confident that she's going to pass, but the corrected
#
paper is just not coming. I kind of started losing hope and I, there was no other way,
#
but I started studying again for the next examination. And just two days before the
#
re-exam, this guy calls me because by then we were already, we exchanged phone numbers,
#
the admin guy in the university. He calls me saying, look, your result has come, you
#
are passed. So you come immediately and collect the result. I don't want to put it in post
#
because then it will not reach you by the time you have to go for the next exam. I think
#
I went, like I was in tears and happiness and like, it was such a relief not to have
#
to give that exam all over again. And it was quite anticlimactic how my four and a half
#
years of medical studies ended in this kind of very low and then a high kind of a situation.
#
And it was very excruciating. And like I said, we're not that old and we don't know how
#
to take this kind of, you know, experiences in our life. You're not used to it. And it was quite
#
traumatic. And I even remember that today I wake up like with nightmares that I'm having
#
to give my medical exam again, medicine exam again. So that's where my medicine journey
#
ended. And like all my classmates were shocked. Nobody could believe that I had failed. And
#
it was kind of very embarrassing for me. Like how am I even going to face these people?
#
You know, not that I would think they would judge me, but I was just judging myself so
#
badly. And yeah, so that that stint ended there.
#
It's interesting you should talk about nightmares because you know, I did arts and I did a BA
#
in English literature. Only reason I chose that was because I knew I wouldn't have to
#
study and obviously I sailed through and I never really cared about exams at all. And
#
yet for years afterwards, I would get a nightmare that I hadn't managed to graduate or I wasn't
#
getting my certificate or I had failed an exam. While during those years, it was never
#
even on my mind. I didn't give a shit. I would have been happy to drop out. So it's a very
#
bizarre kind of not even a nightmare, like a persistent dream that thankfully stopped
#
a few years ago. I was also struck by how you said I became a morning person because
#
I had to wake up at 3am. Like before this you were waking up as late as 5am having toast
#
and jam and going to your agarwal classes and you become a morning person when you have
#
to start waking up at 3am.
#
At an unearthly hour of 3am.
#
I love these definitions but the part that I love best about what you just told me about
#
your medical years was that surreal scene that you cut open someone's skull and then
#
they sing happy birthday. That sounds like a Louis Bunuel film almost. Or I can imagine
#
an Eli Roth film starting like that where you have your opening scene, close up of skull,
#
the scalpel slices through it, it opens out, brains oozing out and then happy birthday
#
to you starts and that's when the title starts. Have you seen, do you watch horror films?
#
Do I watch horror? No, not much.
#
There's this lovely series I love by Eli Roth who some would know for also being an
#
actor. He acted in Tarantino's Inglourious Basterds as well but he directed the series
#
of films called Hostel which I think are absolutely brilliant because there's just so much more.
#
So in Hostel 2 there's a lovely scene towards the end where, I don't know if I'll be judged
#
for saying it's a lovely scene but it's a very striking scene right at the end where
#
the end credits are happening where a bunch of people are kind of in the forest and two
#
girls are being chased by someone I think and one of the girls is caught and she is
#
beheaded and then they play football with her head and the end credits come on while
#
they are playing football with her head and I thought that's such a striking kind of
#
scene and that's somehow what I remembered. Mine was not as bad as that okay.
#
It wasn't but it's the sort of the casualness of you know just that these are just body
#
parts and what is a big deal and the whole casualness of it. There of course the body
#
part became a body part and not a living person because of actions on the part of the protagonist
#
while I'm sure you and your class never killed anyone.
#
I totally don't want people to judge me in thinking that you know we were too callous
#
with the cadavers we would always be very respectful and grateful that people for whatever
#
reason have landed up there and they are the very reason that we are able to learn about
#
the human body and understand you know things which otherwise I mean at least in today's
#
times of multimedia and stuff you can still get a fair understanding even if you didn't
#
dissect a single cadaver but it was like really so important and the absolute basis of everything
#
you go on to learn later on in your medical school.
#
And especially if you want to be a surgeon it's kind of essential I guess yeah no I mean
#
I was drawn to that anecdote just by the element of black humor in there I guess which is but
#
let's move past that to something less black which is riots you know you've also described
#
how a sort of a jarring incident in your early years as a doctor which you remember as an
#
important moment for your choosing to give it up even though it had nothing to do with
#
the profession per se tell me a little bit about that what went on there.
#
Once I finished my medicine I was put into the internship rounds right so you have one
#
year of internship and all my classmates and my good friends from college they had already
#
started their internship five months before me because I was literally waiting for five
#
months to even get my results and usually you do internships in groups like you know
#
five six of you are together so you have like and this is the time you're actually starting
#
to see patients as a doctor and although I must make this remark that most of the male
#
patients would call us sister thinking that because we are women we can't be doctors and
#
even like the guy who's the is the last ranker in our class you say doctor doctor he'll be
#
like treating him with so much respect but we are like nothing so we would go about in
#
a group you know for internship and here I was left all by myself I had nobody like it's
#
also so difficult that even it's the first time you're actually starting to do things
#
on your own it's always good to have your back covered by your friends and you can jointly
#
discuss and say what's what are we going to do and you know even you're not questioned
#
also on your own like if a senior professor is questioning is questioning a group here
#
it's like literally everywhere you're on your own and I felt very exposed and very lonely
#
in the whole process of internship and again it was a huge transition from being a student
#
to being a doctor and having no support no friends and being on on my own those days
#
was very difficult more than anything else for this reason I felt very bad that my papers
#
weren't corrected properly because again it took made me rethink my decision and I thought
#
maybe this is not the right thing for me just having been left alone and somehow I managed
#
to still complete everything and I came out of my internship with a degree you know also
#
there's this team of when a whole bunch of kids are doing this together they discuss
#
okay we're going to apply we're going to give these exams we're going to study for
#
it together we're going to apply to these colleges these are the specialties we want
#
I was completely out of the loop in all those discussions and I had nobody to discuss those
#
things with and even that kind of you know removed some of the steam from my being very
#
serious about pursuing a good career in surgery or something like that when I got my degree
#
I said okay let me do one thing I will work as an RMO for some time which is like a medical
#
officer and then I'll see you know depending on what I feel I will decide what I want to
#
do further because now anyway I'm not in the rat race I have already fallen behind
#
by six months so it doesn't matter there's no such rule that you have to join your PG
#
as soon as you finish your graduation so I was working there and I was straight put
#
into the ICU again very stressful because although I'm not expected to take any decisions
#
or do things on my own there's always the guidance of the senior doctors the nurses
#
etc but still it was like being thrown from straight from one thing into like a boiling
#
hot pan and you have to figure out what to do and you're only seeing critical patients
#
again very stressful so that also made me rethink whether this kind of stress is for
#
a person like me is it good for my temperament etc and I was there for like almost a year
#
I think and somehow I was learning all the you know ICU things around me because this
#
is not something that you're trained in in your medical colleges ICU work is like a whole
#
different ball game everything is you know life and death decision kind of thing it's
#
a very high stress thing now the intensivists are the one who are like the forefront of
#
the covid warrior they are the ones taking these decisions although you know given the
#
lack of that many number of intensivists literally everybody has promoted themselves to be an
#
intensivist because we have to save these lives I was getting used to that and then
#
one very high profile politician got admitted after an accident and he had a emergency surgery
#
and all that and you know somehow see any such major accident and surgery is bound to
#
be a risk of developing some complication or the other and which was clearly explained
#
even before the surgery was done which is why most hospitals won't take such patients
#
because they don't want the risk of someone dying on you when it was really not your fault
#
to begin with right fortunately once this person was discharged from the surgery he
#
died there was the crowd of at least 10 to 12 000 people who are gathered outside the
#
hospital we were some of us rmos on duty some two three senior doctors some two three nurses
#
all in the ICU and they locked up the ICU from outside after they took away the body
#
and you know they set fire to the hospital and what it is they all just from what I know
#
I didn't see this personally but I was told that they just lay down in front of the gate
#
so neither firefighting you know fire engine nothing could even come in and they kind of
#
sealed us from outside and here and because of the fire to avoid short circuit the powers
#
were switched off and here you have patients on ventilators and other like it's I think
#
it was a 20 or 25 or 30 bed ICU and you're worried about how are these other patients
#
going to survive without electricity and the burden of that of just losing people you're
#
in the dark and those days of we had Nokia cell phone I think literally my battery was
#
also out I could not call anyone and we were just hiding and we were inside and we were
#
just praying and like somehow the patients relatives started just lifting them and carrying
#
them outside the hospital with all those IV lines and everything hanging and those kind
#
of pictures were in the newspapers for a few weeks after that was very traumatizing and
#
we were holed up in the ICU with the hospital burning outside and like the whole night and
#
then the next morning and I think I had driven to the hospital I would rarely take the car
#
but it was a Sunday or something I said okay I'm not going to change two autos and buses
#
and all and go and I took the car and the car got not just my car all the cars standing
#
in the parking lot were completely charred we just came out to see their skeletons and
#
this whole mental trauma the police dropped us home to each of our houses then we were
#
asked to come and give statements and all that.
#
Now we see so much you know we hear so much about violence against doctors and this mob
#
mentality people beating up doctors etc but again those days I was new into this I had
#
never heard of something like this could happen I'm generally a very soft person don't like
#
to get into any kind of you know controversy or just I like to mind my own business so
#
this was very very very traumatizing and I could just like I could not even go back to
#
the hospital building where they had called us to give our you know statements and stuff
#
even that was making me extremely panicky and I said I'm going to take a break from
#
this hospital work because this has I think it was like a huge turning point and one would
#
think that after five and a half years of studying to think about you know not going
#
back to that and especially in India you people will say oh you did medicine and you're not
#
practicing you wasted a seat you know government subsidizes your education so much and you're
#
not looking at patients and stuff this is the standard thing that I have been facing
#
since then because ultimately I didn't get back to practice after that to seeing patients
#
and I have the standard retort I say that people who study you know say chemical engineering
#
in IIT and then they do like finance in IIM and then they start a restaurant so how do
#
you explain those kind of things like even those are government subsidized education
#
but no I think medicine is seen with such a kind of put it on a pedestal and the fact
#
that you are supposed to serve the society back because you have wasted a seat in medicine
#
kind of attitude over the years I've gotten used to it and I'm very much in touch with
#
my college classmates and on their WhatsApp groups and they only keep forwarding silly
#
jokes because I think that's their way of coping with life you know like the funny things
#
we see on Twitter are all in those groups and yeah so I think that's how I didn't
#
go back I mean I didn't quit that stage of my life permanently I said I'll see what
#
happens again going with the flow attitude but then I did find other interesting things
#
to do and I didn't really think that I had to practice medicine just because I had studied
#
that knowledge and that kind of processing information and that kind of responsibility
#
and dedication and commitment I think those kind of values are never going to go away
#
and I'm not going to waste what I learnt and I definitely I will be in touch with it
#
in one way or the other I'm just not seeing patients so I think that's how that whole
#
Yeah you know now that you mentioned that incident I remember reading about it in the
#
papers in those days and it's absolutely kind of horrendous what happened and speaking
#
of your erstwhile profession like if there's anyone who has come out of you know what has
#
happened in the last few months with any kind of credit it's really the frontline healthcare
#
workers and the doctors and the nurses and I've seen some of that firsthand the kind
#
of thankless work that they sort of put in and what strikes me here is you know that
#
typically before this you know the medical profession would kind of get a bad name that
#
oh look it's so expensive and they are fleecing and they are making you do all these tests
#
when you don't need to and they are all vultures and this and that and where is the
#
Hippocratic oath and yet in these very difficult times it seems to me that it's fair to say
#
and it's not even sort of a generalisation but it's absolutely fair to say that they
#
are the ones who have stepped up the most and gone way beyond the call of duty in you
#
know what they've done though obviously it could be selection bias from what I have sort
#
of seen with my own eyes but all the reports seem to back up that that's exactly what
#
So it's not sorry it's not like they've had a choice also no matter what their own
#
mental state and whether they are actually capable of handling this kind of crisis like
#
you study medicine but you're not you don't expect that you will encounter a pandemic
#
in your lifetime because it has not happened in the last hundred years and while your life
#
is already stressful and you have these emergency night calls but not this 24 by 7 stress where
#
you don't see light at the end of the tunnel and you don't know when you can stop going
#
to work and take one small break or you can be with your family or you you don't have
#
to be in that suffocating PPE so my heart literally goes out and I feel maybe at this
#
point I feel maybe I took a right decision because I don't think I would have been able
#
to cope with I mean not for the lack of wanting to help people but definitely it's not my
#
kind of something that I can bear emotionally as well seeing this kind of suffering I can't
#
just take it and not be affected by it.
#
My sense is if you were still in the profession you would have stepped up and down what you
#
Maybe I think maybe yeah you're right but because I'm not there I feel maybe I would
#
have totally crumbled but when you're there that's a that's a different kind of an adrenaline
#
rush and your you know dedication that you want to do something for people and I think
#
yeah you're right maybe I would have I can't I can't tears now.
#
No and it's almost dichotomous that I'm struck by like on the one hand you have that negative
#
impression of doctors always sort of fleecing patients and doing this and doing that and
#
in a sense they're responding to incentives but here what you see a lot of where I think
#
people have gone beyond the call of duty in what they have done and typically like I have
#
seen doctors and you know people who work in ICUs for example who are just harangued
#
by relatives of dead patients and you know who are also obviously upset and they are
#
so calm and they deal with it so well and they're just going in there day in day out
#
and kind of getting the job done and I don't know what incentives function there.
#
No incentive is good enough for this it has to come out of your own drive because I don't
#
think what can you give to make people go through this nothing.
#
Yeah no no it's it's fantastic but moving on from sort of that kind of darker subject
#
you know when you were talking about how other professions are allowed to fleet all over
#
the place and you said chemical engineering and then finance in a bank and then started
#
a restaurant and it sounded so incredibly specific that right after this is over I'm
#
There is no specific I just used this in any kind of copper mutation combination I don't
#
Okay we have that disclaimer but imagine if there's one poor guy who accidentally happens
#
I'm not I'm not doing the equivalent of slight tweeting on a podcast no.
#
Yeah slight tweeting is horrible no it's just Twitter can be so horrible sometimes when
#
you know I mean for people who sort of want to be generally straightforward so you know
#
what we've chatted for more than an hour about your personal life and we'll quickly do a
#
little bit more of it after the break and then we'll go on to the food but for the moment
#
let's now take a quick commercial break and if you are listening to this episode it would
#
be entirely appropriate if you go get yourself a healthy snack right now.
#
Have you always wanted to be a writer but never quite gotten down to it well I'd love
#
Over the last year I've enjoyed teaching my online course the art of clear writing and
#
an online community has now sprung up of all my past students.
#
We have workshops a newsletter to showcase the work of students and vibrant community
#
interaction that offers much stimulation and even some comfort in these difficult times.
#
In the course itself through four webinars spread over four weekends I share all I know
#
about the craft and practice of clear writing there are many exercises much interaction
#
and a lovely and lively community at the end of it.
#
The course cost rupees 10,000 plus JST or about a hundred and fifty dollars and the
#
May classes begin on May 1st Saturday May 1st.
#
So if you are interested head on over now to register at indiaankar.com slash clear
#
That's indiaankar.com slash clear writing.
#
Being a good writer doesn't require God given talent just a willingness to work hard and
#
a clear idea of what you need to do to refine your skills.
#
Welcome back to the Scene on the Unseen.
#
I'm chatting with Nandita Ayyar about her superb book Everyday Superfoods and about
#
a very interesting life and her journey into learning more about food but before we actually
#
get to the food so to say let's kind of go back to the way your life is unwinding after
#
you have you know left medicine because of politics as it were.
#
At this point in time what is your conception of yourself?
#
What do you want to do?
#
What are the you know parts that you're thinking about?
#
So definitely I was in a kind of I was in a crossroad and I didn't I didn't really
#
know what my next steps would be and one option definitely was to maybe start like a general
#
practitioner kind of a practice because there was always this huge emphasis on being a super
#
specialist and stuff but even in those days that whole GP concept was dying down to have
#
like a friendly neighborhood doctor who can take care of all your basic problems and I
#
thought I'm okay for that level of stress and I can still handle that.
#
That was one thing on my mind and the second thing was that what else can I do with now
#
that I have my medical degree can I study like an MBA or can I do some other further
#
studies which will open up some more paths to me other than just being a clinical doctor.
#
While I was thinking about these things I got a job opportunity in a health insurance
#
related company where they were looking for doctors to understand certain aspects of the
#
claims and you know because a general person will not really know okay this was the ailment
#
and all this was done for this ailment so you need someone to actually know what was
#
actually required and what were not required so to sort out those kind of things and because
#
I didn't want to sit at home for a single day and at this point an idle mind would have
#
definitely been a devil's workshop with all the stuff that I had experienced and gone
#
through and come out of and I think that would have been the right time to see a therapist
#
or something but that was out of question I didn't even know about you know those kind
#
of terminologies and even having studied medicine I didn't even think of it as an option at
#
There was this opening in a health insurance related company and I just went and I took
#
on that job and it would keep my mind occupied and I said while I do this I can understand
#
if this is something to my liking or I can see what else to do and I worked in that field
#
for two to three years and but again I've always been a very creative person and I need
#
some kind of creativity and that's the thing that gives me joy and here I was neither
#
seeing patients and nor am I doing anything creative that makes me happy and I said this
#
okay while I was getting some decent salary and stuff and I was not wasting my time at
#
home I was not entirely satisfied with what I was doing it felt very dry and boring at
#
this point I should also mention that I was a very early adopter into social media even
#
before the term social media existed so there was this networking site called the rise business
#
networking early on I didn't know what it was but I just made an account for myself
#
and I was connecting with a lot of people around also because I was not in touch with
#
my own classmates and you know five and a half years of doing medicine leaves you with
#
no friends no nothing in your social life and you don't know anybody so then I said
#
okay let me join this I'll at least get to know people from other fields because you've
#
been living in a literal blinker existence for from the day you step into medical college
#
you don't know what is happening in the outside world so I joined this website and I came
#
across people from advertising from so many different I think Prem Panikkar and all I
#
knew from that site early on because that same gang moves on to every new good platform
#
everybody is on Twitter now so literally I know them for like 20 years I think so I went
#
on to that platform and I found out thanks to that I came to know that there is something
#
called healthcare advertising which I would have not known otherwise and you know there
#
is this certain law which says that once you have heard about something you tend to keep
#
seeing similar things around you right I forget what's the name for that phenomenon immediately
#
after I saw that in a couple of days there was this article in the Sunday supplement
#
of Times of India about this new field called healthcare advertising and all I said wow
#
I just came to know about this two days ago and now I'm reading about it in the newspaper
#
I mean is this a sign maybe I can apply my medical knowledge I can write it is creative
#
and it kind of seemed exciting to me at that point of time and I said but how on earth
#
I've never given a job interview in my life I don't have any management degree I don't
#
have any advertising background all I have is a medical degree what am I going to how
#
am I going to get this and somehow through one of the contacts and rise I got the contact
#
of the woman who was heading Ogilvy healthcare which is a branch of Ogilvy and Matha a very
#
leading ad agency which is all over the world and this was the Mumbai branch so I just you
#
know some sometimes I have this spurt of confidence and drive I said let's do it worst case what
#
will happen she'll say get lost at least it would not be for want of not trying so
#
I just contacted her and I said I want to come and meet you can you give me like 15
#
20 minutes of your time and also these are the places where your doctor's degree sometimes
#
helps because the minute they see a doctor's degree they think they can't be such a nonsense
#
person they have some you know some substance in them and people don't refuse you when
#
you request for a meeting like this so I went and met her and she heard me out and she said
#
I said I want to be a part of this but to be honest I don't even know what are the
#
available options for me but somehow I feel like I could fit in here I think I would feel
#
that kind of creative fulfillment at place like this what she did was very interesting
#
she gave me a project and said I'm giving you two weeks you do this project in whatever
#
way I'm not going to give you any guidelines or how we work out here you just figure it
#
out with your own logic and you do this and you come back to me and I did it and I went
#
back in two weeks and I got the job and she said okay so I joined a strategy planner so
#
in healthcare advertising this was mainly for the pharma companies so these are the
#
kind of brochures and literatures that the medical representatives take to the doctors
#
and they tell them about these new drugs and but also there are the same drug is manufactured
#
by five ten different companies so how do you gain some mind space in the doctor's
#
head that he remembers your brand better maybe because you conveyed it in a better way or
#
for whatever reason so that was the specialty of this field where you made a creative communication
#
rather than just dry blah blah blah twice a day you give this is the milligram this
#
is the side effect you know going beyond that and trying to catch some emotions and that's
#
the typical ogilvi way of doing things where everything has their own touch and their spin
#
and they make anything and they can make fevicol interesting so you can imagine how it is so
#
that's how I you know got the job and I really enjoyed it but there was one you know one
#
drawback was that these guys are all like very late starters in the day and I'm a morning
#
person I'll be there by 8 30 in the morning and people come in by 12 31 and when I wanted
#
to leave on time they'll say arey kya half day kind of you know because no one knows
#
that you've been working from early and and that whole culture was very different for
#
someone coming from a medical background it's very laid back if there's a deadline for
#
5 p.m. 4 30 is when people will start working on something which would like make me very
#
panicky because I am not although even I do my best when you know the deadline is closest
#
but I'll not start my work half an hour before I have to submit it that is something that
#
will drive me crazy out of you know anxiety that I've not started my work so I got used
#
to that kind of lifestyle also where again all from different fields one somebody's in
#
art somebody's a client servicing and I am here dealing like in middleman between the
#
advertising and the pharma company so then by now I was in my late 20s after all these
#
winding you know side paths that I had taken and I was chugging along and then I got married
#
in my late 20s and at that time my husband had a job in the US and that was literally
#
the first time I think I traveled outside the country and I went I went I went off to
#
the East Coast with him after I got married and that was the first time in my life I was
#
sitting at home hundred percent leisure nothing to do no deadlines and all my time is my own
#
to do as I please and you know after I think after middle school like fifth standard sixth
#
standard seventh standard this was the first time I was in truly zone where I had nothing
#
to account for and I could just do my own thing and that is when the food bug bit me
#
because I used to I was fascinated by the kind of channels that were on TV and I was
#
even more fascinated that there was a channel to tell you what's going on on all the other
#
channels and for someone who was only seen like a Krishi Darshan and stuff back home
#
because that's when my TV watching days also stopped after that there was no chance to
#
watch TV and I was totally fascinated and there was a food network channel which was
#
showing 24 by 7 food things on you know anytime if you couldn't get sleep or you were jet
#
lagged you just started the TV and you could watch like someone cooking and I found that
#
like utterly fascinating and then all apartments they come with this built-in oven which again
#
I was seeing for the first time I've never had an oven in my life so like it took me
#
two days to even figure out how what is on what is off what because everyone just uses
#
it as a storage to keep extra pots and pans so just took a while to figure that out and
#
then all that inspiration from food TV plus the supermarkets with all the supplies and
#
like so many things to buy which we didn't have and this was in the year 2004 even though
#
we had supermarkets in India at that time but that kind of variety even today you will
#
not find right so all that put together I actually started cooking and experimenting
#
and I would say experimenting because I really didn't know much about like even I didn't
#
know the exact recipe for a sambar or a rasam or anything for that matter so I think all
#
that inspiration put together is when I started cooking and experimenting and those days it's
#
not like you had WhatsApp so you could quickly call your mom and literally keep the stuff
#
on the gas and say now tell me how do I make this so I started I would call her and I would
#
start making notes and at least certain things that reminded me of home and the stuff food
#
that I had enjoyed in my childhood I wanted to recreate that because it was the first
#
time I was away from home it was in the east coast where nine months of winter literally
#
getting dark at three o'clock you did need that comforting situation you know to replicate
#
like a feeling of home and that's when I actually started cooking.
#
So you know that whole journey is very fascinating and different aspects there but first of all
#
you mentioned deadlines that if there was a five o'clock deadline your colleagues would
#
start working at four thirty and I would actually when there's a five deadline I start working
#
at four fifty five and there's this great quote by Douglas Adams my listeners might
#
like which is quote I love deadlines I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by
#
stop quote although I would never advise any of my students to be so lax with deadlines
#
but I am I'm terrible with them.
#
I like that quote though I love that quote yeah it's I think I quoted Adams in the last
#
episode as well which makes it seem like I'm some kind of Adams fanboy and I'm actually
#
not but these are great quotes though I'm not a hater either.
#
So to kind of get back to what you mentioned about cooking is it in some way an advantage
#
or does it give you a different kind of way at looking at cooking the fact that you learnt
#
it so late like for example I didn't do economics in college so whatever I learnt about economics
#
or political philosophy or whatever I learnt much later in my life and therefore I wasn't
#
bound say by the dogmas or the reflexive thinking or whatever the education system might tell
#
you so I didn't read only the Keynesians but also the Austrians and also whatever and it's
#
kind of broader and I feel that that's kind of an advantage the fact that I am learning
#
different things on my own at different points in time and all of that going into the prism
#
through which I sort of look at things is in a sense an advantage do you feel that in
#
terms of cooking the fact that you know a lot of people will learn cooking by just picking
#
up habits when they are kids that isko aase banate and this is how you do this and this
#
is how you do that and you are almost learning everything from scratch right from how to
#
turn an oven on and you're learning all the basics from scratch do you feel that one that
#
that helped you and made you a little different from you know others who might have learnt
#
as kids and just internalized a lot of habits whether good or bad and do you think that
#
it forced you to explicitly think about food about the process of cooking and that might
#
have played a part in you know what you then went on to become yeah I mean you are right
#
and now that you mention it I definitely feel like it did play a part in making me a more
#
fearless not bound to rules kind of a cook and I don't believe in like this is the hundred
#
percent authentic recipe that I must take too if it tastes good it's good and yeah
#
like in having different kinds of combinations which traditionally you know we may not be
#
cooking it together or serving two kinds of dishes together I never had such hang ups
#
I would cook anything with anything a few months ago I had posted this on Twitter like
#
dosa with rajma okay so I got trolled by both the South Indians and the North Indians saying
#
how dare you like you know that Greta Thunberg jiff how dare you kind of thing that people
#
were sending me and which is why I'm not bound to this you know I feel this is a good combination
#
I like it and I'm not following anybody's rules not even my grandmother's rules about
#
what to be served with what and I'm eating this myself or I'm serving this to my family
#
who don't mind eating it so why is it anybody else's problem right so definitely made me
#
a more creative cook made me work with a whole lot of different ingredients which I found
#
in US at that time and it just kept my mind very open because I had no set things to follow
#
in the first place like only these vegetables can go into sambar or with this sambar only
#
this curry no such hang ups I like whatever is available or whatever I find fascinating
#
and whatever I pick up from the shop I would just cook with that I had no plan as such
#
you know I didn't think about this factor at all but definitely I think it played a
#
role in how I started cooking and I continue to cook today.
#
And you also kind of mentioned that you know in your advertising days you know when you
#
were writing copy and you were like an in between between the pharma and the marketing
#
people and I guess one of the things you were doing at that time is a skill that you practice
#
anyway when it comes to food and is a skill that would in some senses have been inherent
#
to you which is that you break down a complex idea in simple language and the thing is when
#
you are to have to do that is a great way to learn about something because if you force
#
yourself to put something in simple language you are you know forcing yourself to understand
#
it that much better so is that kind of that way of thinking that systematic assimilative
#
way of thinking where you know you build a base and then you start from there is that
#
something that you feel has always been there with you because that's also the approach
#
that you will that you bring to your food writing for example that is and I imagine
#
that even when you are you know learning Indian classical music that's partly it you know
#
you figure out certain first principles certain rules of the game and then you play around
#
with those and then it gets more and more complex but your base is very solid at that
#
point so is that kind of explicit thinking something that you do for whatever you take
#
up or is it something that you had to do for the different things you have taken up what's
#
your mindset like because it strikes me that a lot of other people who might write about
#
food for example will almost you know take an almost intuitive approach to it where it
#
will be like you know if they are doing a food review it will almost be like what is
#
their sensory experience while you know taking something while I think that you know people
#
like you and Krish Ashok who was on the show earlier are kind of more methodical thinking
#
a little harder about it tell me a bit about that mindset is that something that you've
#
tried to build and cultivate or is that even something that in self-reflective moments
#
you've kind of thought about when it comes to how you go about your work.
#
So like we were discussing earlier I value the impact of almost everything that I have
#
done in the past be it medical college be it healthcare advertising or the long stint
#
in freelance writing I think everything contributes even without your knowing it small bits and
#
pieces towards making you who you are and making your processes the way they are when
#
it comes to working so while I definitely like to have a very intuitive approach to
#
things like you know we talk about first draft second draft my first draft is very stream
#
of consciousness very intuitive I don't even think about how is the flow or is it I just
#
put what's on my mind and that's what lends that personal touch also and not make it sound
#
very like a science project methodical or a science paper kind of writing and then you
#
know thinking about the flow thinking about what more details could be added what more
#
don't I know about the subject that I need to study research a little bit on the side
#
and then come back to add those kind of details because it has never happened that I've written
#
on a subject and I knew everything about it on day one or when I started writing that
#
I've only learnt more and more as I've written and you know then that knowledge gets applied
#
into the next thing you do so it just gets carried forward and yeah so I think it's
#
a combination of both definitely intuitive and because I'm by nature very disciplined
#
and I like to have a certain method to doing things because I'm also the other extreme
#
where if I don't have a method I can be completely mad so for my own sanity I like to keep a
#
certain method you know break it down into smaller chunks and make sure I'm able to give
#
my attention to every of these little parts of any project that I'm working on so like
#
you rightly said even Indian classical music I learnt Carnatic for quite a few years as
#
a kid and then I think maybe in my adulthood as a rebellion to be a rebellion to having
#
forced to learn Carnatic music I started learning Hindustani classical and it is something I
#
definitely enjoyed more I found that there is more scope for creativity and it's a less
#
hard on you with in terms of rules and stuff of course there are plenty of rules and I
#
don't even claim to know fully well the differences between the two streams even though I've learnt
#
but you know applying these principles just makes it a little bit easier which otherwise
#
a vast subject like this it can feel completely difficult to even approach let alone conquer
#
yeah absolutely and I love the phrase that you just used here carry forward it which
#
is such a charmed Indianism no I'm not making fun of you I think it's a charming phrase
#
and language evolves carry forward it so what you also did during this time is you also
#
did a diploma or a degree in nutrition I think right so tell me a little bit more about that
#
so in 2004 I went to the US for a year or so and then I came back to India and the cooking
#
bug had bitten me good and proper so I continued you know my biggest worry in coming back to
#
India was how am I going to get those ingredients you know and the minute I land I have to get
#
myself an oven because I wanted to continue that process even though I was back home I
#
was back in Bombay and I continued cooking and again experimental I had not gained any
#
expertise in just like nine months to one year of cooking so you know at those in those
#
days there was some few cooking websites like this scifi.com Bhavarchi they had one section
#
then like there was I think Tarla Dalal had set up a website or I don't remember but there
#
were very few cooking websites so you could get recipes from these websites and there
#
was my biggest regret was there was no food network in India and there were no food good
#
food channels in India and there was no way to get them also but anyway I had got enough
#
inspiration from there and I just needed that to keep continuing and when I did that I realized
#
that I was so experimental and intuitive in my cooking that I could never replicate a
#
dish if it turned out good because I didn't even know what I put into it in the first
#
place I would just keep putting things as I went right so then I said okay I need to
#
start a blog and this is how I will keep everything in one place and I can refer to it myself
#
I had no inkling that there was somebody going to search for recipes on the web and land
#
up on my blog and I didn't think that was going to happen at all but then within a few
#
weeks I got some comments and I realized that there's a whole bunch of food bloggers out
#
there mostly Indians in the US they were trying to preserve their culture and you know like
#
calling parents and taking recipes and putting it down in this permanent kind of format where
#
they could access it at any time and which is why I said oh this is already there so
#
I should continue at this and I whatever I would experiment at home I would keep posting
#
it on my blog and I think a year passed and I surprisingly didn't get bored of it because
#
I would have thought like okay you know blogger had a very simple interface like if you could
#
type you could just do it and it was easy I kept continuing at it and then I said okay
#
I think I should actually study nutrition properly because in medical school it's hardly
#
touched upon although there's one subject called preventive and social medicine in the
#
second ABBS but in that it's mostly the preventive disease preventing diseases talking about
#
things like polio tuberculosis vaccination public health essentially while nutrition
#
should have been integral to this topic it wasn't and we hardly touched upon anything
#
like our knowledge of nutrition was as good as any lay person's knowledge and I said
#
if I'm writing so much about food and now I'm cooking so much I should know a little
#
bit more than what I know already so which is why I did this fellowship in applied nutrition
#
from Apollo which was a distance come residential kind of a course and that helped me a lot
#
in understanding things which I either knew very haphazardly or I didn't know about at
#
all so I thought it would be a great way to marry the hobby and my qualification and it
#
would just narrow the gap and bring it somehow together but I think I'm doing I'm saying
#
all this in retrospect I didn't think so much then I just thought this is a good idea and
#
I'm learning something so it's not wasted anyway I will put it to use and that's when
#
I did that course and then it just you know that that's when I started moving the niche
#
of my blog and my writing I started I was a regular writer for men's health India and
#
I would write mostly on nutrition and health related topics and also quite a bit of well
#
researched things in you know nutrition the science of it etc because men's health is
#
a very very health focused magazine and you know everything is like proper verified information
#
and it's not just saying things which are popular on the internet kind of thing so that
#
course in nutrition helped me kind of figure out what I want my focus to be over the next
#
years and it also helped because I was cooking a lot I was getting a lot more interested
#
in food and you know I would want to call friends home so I could try out different
#
things and make lots of food and serve people because otherwise it's just my husband and
#
me how much are we going to cook and eat I would look forward to these you know calling
#
people over and yeah so I think that that was the other turning point actually focusing
#
on nutrition and whereby using my education in somewhat good way where I can contribute
#
my knowledge of you know the human body physiology biochemistry everything and nutrition coming
#
And it kind of strikes me that the science of nutrition is a bit of a contrast to the
#
science of medicine for example in the sense that the science of medicine you know what
#
you know is what you know and of course there are things you don't know and you find out
#
more about them but as far as what you know is concerned it's fairly settled it'll evolve
#
in terms of going deeper but you're not going to find that what you thought was a fundamental
#
truth is completely false while I think in nutrition in a sense that has kind of happened
#
like one of my pet themes and it's a surprise I haven't really done an episode on it is
#
you know how America's obesity epidemic was actually caused by the state where for decades
#
we had this impression that sugar is fine and fat is evil while in recent times we have
#
realized that that's absolutely not true and for those who are further interested you know
#
there's a great book by Gary Taubes called the case against sugar there's a great book
#
by Nina Tycolls called the big fat surprise I'll link them from the show notes I think
#
Tycolls also did a good episode with Joe Rogan on them but the TLDR of that of what fundamentally
#
happened is that these cases were made to find out more about heart disease these studies
#
were done rather to find out more about heart disease in the 50s and 60s and they were funded
#
by the sugar lobby you know the methodology was suspect and they made fat the big villain
#
and absorb sugar while today we know that fundamentally sugar is poison certainly in
#
certain forms and you know in processed foods and so on and so forth so it's very interesting
#
that it's you know on the one hand you do medicine where the science is kind of settled
#
but on the other hand you're doing nutrition where it seems like the whole world is being
#
upended every two years and there are more and more sort of new things coming out how
#
does one then cope with that because then the concept of healthy changes a little bit
#
like when I was growing up I remembered that fatty foods weren't good you know even when
#
it came to meats people were moving to leaner meats which we now know is completely unnecessary
#
and at the same time you know it was okay to drink coke and and you know with all its
#
many spoons of sugar or whatever it is which is just insane and you've got a nice little
#
screed against processed foods in your book so tell me a little bit about how you're thinking
#
of nutrition evolved in this period of time because there are also so many fads and fashions
#
going on and it's almost like different ideological camps form around these things so when when
#
you so what was your what's your take on this what was your approach of all this yeah you're
#
right because you know study of disease and the study of nutrition are like completely
#
different things happening and definitely there has been more funding and more priority
#
to the study of disease because you can save lives whereas studying nutrition it's more
#
like you're preventing something so it definitely gets a little less or much less importance
#
than the study or funding of disease but then who funds the nutrition studies it is mostly
#
lobbies be it like the sugar lobby or the wheat growing lobby or the dairy lobby right so
#
I have I have heard about this in the US that if a certain lobby is funding a study you
#
can be like 75 percent sure that that study will only bring about the points that are
#
favorable to the lobby who funded them isn't that obvious because there is such a conflict
#
of interest if someone is paying me one crore to say find out about this but they are themselves
#
a sugar company how can I come out and say that sugar is bad right so I think believing
#
in such studies you should also know who has funded these studies in the first place because
#
that also impacts to a great extent what the result of that study turns out to be you know
#
I think treating health is just the absence of disease and therefore not giving nutrition
#
an important role is also very what do you say it's not a good thing because I think
#
preventing is much easier it costs less and it's more sustainable in the long run and
#
you can just do it by making these small changes in your day to day life rather than someone
#
who has to literally flush down his entire life savings to do a like a bypass surgery
#
or undergo like a dialysis every two weeks so I think we need to step back and we need
#
to stop thinking about health only when we fall sick you know in traditional Chinese
#
medicine I had read about this thing where the emperors would pay a retainer to the physicians
#
the traditional Chinese medicine physicians and the minute they fell sick they would not
#
pay them because they are paying them to keep them healthy not to treat them when they fell
#
sick so if the emperor or their family the royal family fell sick they would not get
#
paid for that month so it's the reverse right and that is the importance of something like
#
a nutrition or your lifestyle where little steps matter a lot and what you can do on
#
a daily basis and that is exactly in contrast from some of these fads and the camps that
#
you were talking about where I can't think of any fad or a kind of a diet a diet that
#
excludes a lot of foods a diet that deprives people you can't possibly do it all your
#
life and because there are a lot of other factors that play a role in what you eat your
#
emotional state your family your socio-economic status and something like nutrition is impacted
#
by so many factors and it is not easy to just put a label and say that you do this diet
#
and you will lose you know 10 kilos of weight and that is the kind of oversimplified information
#
that is actually so much invoked these days people just want binaries are you vegan are
#
you like meat eating is meat good is vegan good there are no simple answers to this and
#
nutrition see health itself is a medicine and health is a very complicated science you're
#
dealing with the human body and every human body is different and in a space like nutrition
#
where there's even much less research and there are so many it's like in mathematical
#
terms it's like a multivariable problem where what variable are you going to fix to understand
#
what is the thing right and someone may spend 20 years researching on where the maximum
#
antioxidants are in a grape and they find it that it's on the surface of the seed and
#
you know we are all eating seedless grapes these days but you find that and another one
#
year somebody else comes and says no no it's actually in the pulp so it's like things like
#
you said things change so rapidly so then are we supposed to keep reading and updating
#
ourselves on every such research paper or sometimes just follow some absolute basic
#
rules like eating whole foods eating in moderation not eating too much like not stuffing yourself
#
until you're 100% full and therefore eating slowly so you realize when you're full you
#
know eating in a pleasant setup where you're eating mindfully so these are the things that
#
you can never go wrong with and no paper is going to come out tomorrow and tell you that
#
you ate a little less so you know you have created space for this disease in your life
#
that's never going to happen so why not follow the principles that you know for certain are
#
not going to change like if someone eats one or two eggs in a day that's not going to kill
#
them so don't do anything extreme and I think the biggest problem in today's times is that
#
the more polarized you are in any field that you're more in use and the people will lap
#
up your information immediately but the minute you are very moderate and you don't have that
#
extreme bone in you you don't people say what is this so boring like in being in between
#
is the worst place to be because you'll get no attention but see Nandita you are the kind
#
of person on Twitter that they would call you a centrist when it comes to food as a
#
pejorative no no sorry I interrupted you finish I was pretty much done yeah I think that that's
#
what I wanted to say that you know also things like a gut microbe for example a gut it's
#
like 37 trillions of gut microbes and is it even possible that even in a century we'll
#
do enough research to understand what impact this has on our body but we do know certain
#
things for sure that you know gut microbes influence your immunity because they talk
#
to your immune system gut microbes influence your mental health you know gut microbes influence
#
a lot of functions in your body which still cannot be specified or put down in a listicle
#
but what is known is that when you eat you are literally feeding your gut microbes you're
#
not feeding yourself because whatever the stuff that your body hasn't digested these
#
are the guys that are going to digest all of that and then release the byproducts which
#
then benefits you in so many different ways like head to toe it's affecting your body
#
so to think of the science is so complex and so fascinating but even by just following
#
some very basic general principles having this background knowledge but doing simple
#
things which you know for certain will have positive impact in your life I think that
#
is very important yeah in fact you know people say we were colonized by the British no we
#
are colonized by our gut microbes and just to sort of elaborate on a thought which I
#
kind of left halfway about how the state caused the obesity epidemic the thing is after all
#
these studies came out in the 50s and the 60s in the late 1970s the US health association
#
whatever they are called I forget the official name came out with a series of dietary guidelines
#
on what you should eat and what you should not eat and they got it completely wrong and
#
if you look at the graph of America's obesity epidemic it kind of begins from there and
#
of course sugar is a big problem I was in keto for a while and it really worked for
#
me but then I kind of went off and I sort of went back but it worked for me except that
#
you know in India it's kind of hard to keep a keto diet because you are surrounded by
#
biryani and dosa and so on so what do you do and I also agree about not getting too
#
alarmed by whatever the fad of the day might be like I saw the headline a few months ago
#
saying bacon causes cancer and that was too much for me I was like let it cause cancer
#
I'm not going to stop having bacon for God's sake and by the way you mentioned gut there's
#
a lovely book I'd read a few years back called gut by Julia Enders which was a fascinating
#
book on the effect of the gut on our physical and mental health so I'll link that from
#
the show notes as well let's go on to your book because one of the early things that
#
you write in your fine book is where you talk about the virtue of the diet of our grandparents
#
like you quote Michael Pollan saying don't eat anything your great great great grandmother
#
wouldn't recognize as food stop quote and then you have this nice section on what your
#
maternal great grandparents actually ate and why and what their routines were like tell
#
me a little bit about that because that was also quite instructive for me so you know
#
Michael Pollan's that quote is obviously very very very famous almost everybody has
#
heard of it but it's also a bit extreme and it's not really it's not possible to follow
#
it 200 percent in today's times because we're not 200 years earlier we are in 2021 and we
#
will be influenced by the things that are happening now the things that are available
#
now the way our life is now so we can't really go back in time and eat what exactly they
#
ate but I think it's worthwhile just catching the the sentiment behind that statement where
#
if you have to choose between two kinds of foods there should be enough knowledge that
#
you're choosing something that is lesser processed and there is knowledge everywhere but once
#
you keep putting this into practice every single day which might feel a bit tough initially
#
but when you put this into practice every day it just becomes second nature and you
#
know that that knowledge becomes the way you deal with every little food confusion that
#
you have in your life because you know like there's this nice saying which I read somewhere
#
three times a day you get to choose what you're going to put inside your body and how you're
#
going to impact your health so make it worthwhile it's very simple like say if I have to choose
#
between say you know a banana and a banana bread even a kid knows that a banana is closer
#
to the way nature made it than banana bread which has added flour sugar baking powder
#
salt eggs everything right fat and it's cooked at a high heat so it's baked just eating
#
the banana would have been far simpler but here we are in the times when we are like
#
banana bread edition two with the pandemic you know having restarted and we're all making
#
banana bread as something like a comfort food because banana as a fruit doesn't hit that
#
spot as a comfort food it doesn't have the added sugar added fats added carbs which is
#
what qualifies to make it as a comfort food and it takes all those boxes to make us feel
#
good so there's this whole emotional aspect also like given the times we are facing now
#
we are having two kinds of behavior either there are people chugging liters of kada and
#
eating like vitamin C going out of stock on Amazon people are eating zinc and vitamin
#
C tablets and the others are just saying chug this I'm just having to stay sane in these
#
times I'm going to eat whatever makes me happy I'm not even stepping out so my weight is
#
the last thing on my mind I just need to eat something that makes me feel good and both
#
these lines of thought are right for the times that we are now you know so it's very difficult
#
to just tell people that hey these are the rules follow it and don't eat unprocessed
#
at all but we need to have a decent enough inherent knowledge of what is good for us
#
and put that into practice in our day-to-day life whenever possible and not really beat
#
ourselves up for the times like these when you know this is the last thing on our mind
#
right now and we just want to we have we are in that survival instinct where neither are
#
we worried about our weight nor are we worried about the impact of some chips that I'm going
#
to eat now or I'm thinking of eating it in a raw state no because even like so many people
#
even in the wellness scene world over have said that they have been eating a lot of sugar
#
they've been eating a lot of carbs in the last one year can't blame ourselves for that
#
because that's the way the times are and that's how we are trying to cope with that so that
#
is also fine but overall you should know what is good for you and you know regarding yeah
#
my great-grandparents I really found it fascinating when I made that comparison between what we
#
do and you know what I've seen my great-grandparents the way they eat and even much later when
#
there was a telephone at home they would actually keep the telephone off hook during lunchtime
#
because they don't want to be disturbed by phone calls and today we are actually having
#
the mobile phone in our hand and scrolling down and seeing what's going on like we want
#
to be disturbed right and we have gone to the other extreme and sometimes they would
#
forget to put the phone back on hook even until four o'clock and and because they were
#
growing old we would like be you know getting mad at them like what is this they're forever
#
forgetting to put this back on hook but that was their dedication to the ritual of eating
#
even the most basic simple meal where they didn't know superfoods they didn't know what
#
they would buy what was cheap what was in season and what was available in their local
#
market and you know they all lived up to 90 and touch wood like no ailments or anything
#
so I have seen that firsthand and the same with my grandparents the kind of dedication
#
and creating a ritual around eating and having a calm scenario and you know having that respectful
#
atmosphere towards your food and not just gulping it down so I read this interesting
#
thing in B. Wilson's book called The Way We Eat where she quotes this study done on
#
four thousand Japanese men who live in the US and they were all above 30 years of age
#
and they wanted to compare that you know even though they're eating Japanese food how does
#
their heart disease incidence etc compare with the men living in Japan and eating Japanese
#
food and even though these people living in the US were eating Japanese food their heart
#
disease rates were five-fold as compared to the ones in Japan why because they didn't
#
have that slow culture they didn't have that sense of attachment towards their food setting
#
up everything nicely grab and this the whole American attitude of being rushed and grab
#
and go in a hurry and you know the impatience and urgency around food versus the slow rhythms
#
and the rituals of eating in Japan you know though they were eating the same food they
#
still showed where everything else was constant they still showed a five-fold increase in
#
things like heart disease so it just goes to show that how we eat is a lot lot more
#
important than what we eat and sometimes we don't even focus on what we eat so let
#
alone how we eat that's like the next step right so we need to not just understand what
#
is it that we're eating but we also need to understand how are we eating are we eating
#
mindfully and you know are we having that kind of relationship with food where it's
#
not over guilt or hate or emotions or boredom but you're eating to nourish yourself and
#
it's a very healthy relationship yeah there's a there's a lot of fascinating stuff to unpack
#
them I mean it strikes me that in modern times we are really fighting off a competition between
#
two competing addictions or perhaps two cooperating addictions one is to carbs and one is to social
#
media which is why we are eating lots and lots of carbs while staring at our smartphones
#
I mean I was on keto a couple of years back and I lost almost 20 kgs and felt incredibly
#
healthy and no brain fog and so on and it was pretty amazing but this year I have completely
#
you know you described the kind of person who's just ordering comfort food all the
#
time so I've finished my biryani phase thankfully that seems to be behind me but now I'm in
#
my pizza phase so god knows where this is going and definitely at my heaviest ever now
#
a couple of sort of questions that emerge out of what you said and again staying on
#
the grandparents theme because that seems to me to be an interesting dining table to
#
use as a prism for looking at our own dining tables in different ways and one of those
#
ways is mindfulness like very often when I'm eating even if I've ordered something that
#
I really love eating or you know if I've cooked something I love eating like I make the best
#
bacon and egg fried rice in India but even when I'm having food that I love you know
#
I'm only focused on the taste for maybe the first 20-30 seconds after that I'm lost in
#
my smartphone or I'm reading something or maybe I'm lost in my thoughts and it's all
#
kind of gone and I'm not thinking about my food at all I'm gulping it down I'm definitely
#
not chewing as much as I'm supposed to chew and all of that and this is something that
#
kind of baffles me that I love food you know taste matters to me you know I like specific
#
things and I don't like other things but sometimes I will be I will have finished a meal without
#
even having focused on it for a single moment you know and I'm looking back at my childhood
#
and I'm can't recall what it was like were we more mindful than like I can totally imagine
#
taking the phone off the hook because you want it to be an experience where you're interacting
#
with your family and you don't have four people sitting together but at the same time sitting
#
separately because there's a screen in front of them have we become less mindful of our
#
food what do you remember from your personal memories and is this something that you tell
#
yourself when you sit down to eat that I'm going to focus on the taste now that I'm going
#
to actually do you have to force yourself to do that number one and number two if you
#
were to sort of make a normative judgment on this is this bad is not being mindful while
#
eating bad and if so why?
#
I'll just address the thing you asked last first and then go back into the question see
#
it is bad for a few reasons the most obvious being that we are consuming calories of food
#
in some form and we are not enjoying that and we are not putting our mind into it and
#
at the end of it we don't even know sometimes if have we eaten it or not because we have
#
been so absent from the whole process of eating and the other problem this leads to is that
#
you know even satiety is in a way linked to this so if your mind has not been in the process
#
your body may not even realize that hey I've eaten so you may end up eating again something
#
very soon because forget the digestion your mind has not digested the fact that you have
#
eaten that food and in a way one does end up consuming more calories because invariably
#
when we are not focused on our eating process because it takes 20 minutes for the stomach
#
to send the signal to the brain that it's full but if we have finished our whole food
#
in five minutes then where is the time to understand how full or how not full are we?
#
I was doing intermittent fasting for a very long time and it helped me a great deal but
#
I had to stop because I started getting like excruciating headaches and I was not able
#
to do it anymore but I realized when I started fasting that how hunger feels you know because
#
we are so used to being surrounded by food all the time and especially being someone
#
who is in the food space and I am constantly cooking tasting you know and I am never been
#
religious so I have never done a religious fast in my life and this is what I felt okay
#
this is how hunger feels like and just to experience hunger was like a miracle because
#
we you know in our privileged set up we never experience hunger before we feel hungry we
#
have already eaten something right and very rarely if we have gone out especially in Bangalore
#
scenario and you got stuck in traffic for two hours and then you come back home really
#
hungry but that's like a forced situation you have never done it voluntarily so I think
#
just experiencing what hunger feels like experiencing what full feels like we don't unless we pay
#
attention to our body we are not going to even know this and even though I have written
#
a book about this it's a constant struggle you know sometimes even before I sit down
#
to eat I think what am I going to watch with this today you know because my eating time
#
is sometimes my only free time in the day and I have other deadlines lined up and things
#
to do so I feel this is the only time I can give myself a break and watch something but
#
why don't I treat the food itself as a break why do I need an additional crutch to add
#
on to this break right and this is interesting thing last December November I started watching
#
these Korean YouTube vloggers I am not talking about Kdrama I haven't started watching that
#
yet despite too much pressure on Twitter I see that everywhere you know I was fascinated
#
by the way they lead their lives and these are not just Koreans in Korea but also the
#
ones who live in US and other places and trust me it was like a rabbit hole and I could never
#
come out of it it was so fascinating and riveting how slow how meaningful how mindful they lead
#
their life and I am not saying because somebody on YouTube just posted a vlog about that and
#
that's how they all are but it does give me the impression that they definitely stick
#
to these traditions they take this very seriously they believe in cooking everything from scratch
#
and even their children and the next generation loves Korean traditional food and no matter
#
because their food also has quite different kinds of sometimes bitter they even use things
#
like karela in their cooking and you know the kids eat everything and they all sit together
#
at the table and there's this one scene which I won't forget there's this and they also
#
show a lot of cleaning in their videos they're obsessed with keeping their house spotlessly
#
clean and I watched that while saying that my own room is dirty but I'm watching that
#
and you know after cleaning the bathroom and everything scrubbing the whole house clean
#
she'll come to her balcony and make herself like a small pot of some beautiful tea and
#
in a small plate some two pieces of cake and cookie and she'll keep it on her table on
#
the balcony and no no gadgets no books nothing around and she will slowly be sipping that
#
and eating that while one cat is purring around so this is the classic scene and it made me
#
feel like I want that life and I want to be in that mental state where you know I finish
#
all the housework and I take this break with a cup of tea and a cake which I eat and drink
#
absolutely guilt-free and I feel like I have earned this and putting my whole mind and
#
all my five senses into this experience and how can that cake make you gain weight because
#
it has already released so much of happy hormones the good kind of hormones instead of the stressful
#
cortisol that actually makes you accumulate the belly fat and all that so I feel like
#
this is why how you eat is so important imagine just going through a drive-through like in
#
a country where there's a drive-through and buying some of these you know cakes or some
#
milkshakes or something and drinking in the car and going away that is so American but
#
you know when you see this stark difference in Korea and their culture you know there's
#
so much to learn from that I'm sure Indians were also like that but these guys just make
#
the most aesthetic and pleasing videos that make you aspire to that kind of life.
#
In fact this is another cinematic moment like I can think of you know if a film of your
#
life would begin with you know Eli Roth or Louis Bunuel perhaps directing that scene
#
where the skull is being cut open and they're singing happy birthday it could end with you
#
know Ozu directing the last scene of the closing credits where you're in the balcony with a
#
little cup of tea and one little biscuit and there's just peace and quiet and focus so
#
suddenly you know a full journey we have kind of traveled here those who of course were
#
Japanese and not Korean but you know similar fields as it were the other aspect of you
#
know what you describe about your great-grandparents table is something that almost seems to me
#
to become a virtue out of necessity like you point out that they eat food which is local
#
seasonal cheap they don't cook more than they are going to eat at a particular meal but
#
that flows from necessity because there are no fridges so they can't store food there
#
are no fridges the world is not so interconnected that food can come from wherever so out of
#
necessity you are eating local seasonal and cheap and that becomes a virtue now you know
#
going back to what Pauline said and of course Pauline didn't literally mean that you have
#
to eat what your great-great-great-grandmother ate two conflicting thoughts come up here
#
for me and one thought of course is the classic conservative thought that if there is a particular
#
diet that has evolved over a period of time if your grandmother said this is healthy eat
#
this there's a reason it has evolved because it works for you and sometimes our traditions
#
have sort of deeper reasonings behind them which might not necessarily be a reasoning
#
that was scientific to begin with but just comes from the practice through generations
#
and so on and there is much value and merit in that at the same time it strikes me that
#
our great-great-grandparents didn't have access to either a lot of the food or the knowledge
#
that we do like we are surrounded by so many different kinds of foods today that our grandparents
#
would not have known and and the question then comes up is that you know how how does
#
one evolve a set of values around what one is to eat like when you think of your own
#
eating for example so there is a certain kind of food that you like eating that because
#
you've grown up eating that and you acquire tastes along the way but at some point in
#
time you've clearly thought and said that this is the kind of food that I want to eat
#
and this is my philosophy behind this kind of food this is why I want to eat this kind
#
of food and at the same time of course I do want it to be tasty as well so it is not only
#
you know this thing how did you evolve your way of thinking about food and where would
#
you say it has kind of arrived today?
#
See I've been a vegetarian since I was born I was born in a vegetarian family and of course
#
I ate eggs and that was the limit of my you know dietary habits see currently like you
#
said and always grown up eating Tamil food South Indian food there was not like much
#
experimentation happening my one of my aunts was like keen on trying out new things and
#
she would like cut things from magazines and try them out and I was like a willing taster
#
for everything so that exposed me a little bit outside of our very traditional food but
#
growing up that was it and you know we were not like the very restaurant visiting family
#
either because one very middle class and money had to be saved for more important things
#
and also you know we had like a couple of restaurants in the Dadar sign area where we
#
would love the food and we'd go like once in few months as a treat and I just would
#
order the same thing you know in these places and that was my food world and it's not like
#
we had like too much of a social circle of friends or eating at other people's houses
#
so I was not even exposed much to other Indian cuisines let alone much of foreign cuisines
#
but today as you say there's been such an explosion in the last decade or so from things
#
like food shows cookbooks magazines YouTube and you know on the web so much of content
#
and even stuff that's available like at the click of a button on Amazon you can order
#
anything right from gochugaru to a smoked paprika to you name it you will get it instantly
#
so availability is there all the kind of creative ideas are there and if you are interested
#
in trying out these new things and of course this whole bunch of restaurants and delivery
#
services so it is so much stimulation available for you to choose from so it becomes increasingly
#
difficult what the hell do I eat you know sometimes you know I tell my husband I'm
#
not going to cook today I'm very bored and you say okay let's order and then we figure
#
out for half an hour one hour what to order and I said I would have just finished cooking
#
in this much time you know so it's just like what to order and what to eat is like you
#
just tear your hair over that and it's sometimes more painful than the cooking process itself
#
so how do you even choose what to cook and sometimes sometimes I go about the way of
#
a menu plan where I tell myself also in some sometimes I'm in the middle of some recipe
#
testing for my books or my column etc so I will write down that I want to make these
#
things in the week and sometimes something catches my fancy online and I say okay I wish
#
I could try that out and I will make a note of that but then you know some I just go back
#
to sambar rice and sabzi because I don't want to think about what to make and I don't have
#
to you know read the whole kitchen which ingredient is where this that and just keep it very simple
#
and I think five days a week I just keep it very very simple because I think like Steve
#
Jobs who just knew what to wear in the morning every day I just feel more comfortable knowing
#
what am I going to cook every day I don't want to be raking my head in the morning what's
#
for lunch what's for dinner so I think one is comfort of going back to tradition and
#
two not having the hassle of thinking too much about what so within the spectrum how
#
can I eat healthy maybe one day I will eat millets and I'll have some kind of raw salad
#
along with my meal and in the vegetable it will be something seasonal and you know am
#
I having something fermented like dahi or some pickle with this so within the construct
#
of my traditional food I just figure out what is available what is the best see also even
#
cooking is a process of choosing from the best ingredients and making something nice
#
out of it and in this case by best I mean what is the healthiest and best for you for
#
your health and if I could choose from ten different things okay I want to put this this
#
this together in my plate today but I know what I am going to make if it's just like
#
a sambar or a rasam or a curry I just know how to apply that into this that process just
#
makes it simpler when you are the one cooking because I have seen friends and people who
#
you know they are outside and their cook calls them from out that madam what should I make
#
and they say kuch bhi banao because they one they have outsourced the whole cooking process
#
outsource the buying of the grocery and stuff now you are also outsourcing the process of
#
deciding what you are going to eat to the person who is cooking for you I find that
#
most fascinating amusing and also like boss why are you giving away your health in your
#
cook's hands like you can't even decide what you want to eat you know because even that
#
process is so tough telling the cook what to cook
#
no it's all fascinating and you mentioned Steve Jobs and obviously the reason Jobs used
#
to kind of wear the same clothes every day like not literally the same clothes clothes
#
but you know that the same kind of uniform as it were the black turtleneck shirt and
#
the jeans was to avoid what cognitive psychologists call decision fatigue because every decision
#
you take through a day tires you out and you want to save as much energy as possible and
#
one way of Jobs was that he doesn't have to decide what he is going to wear so it's the
#
same thing every day and equally in your first book which is the Everyday Healthy Vegetarian
#
which you wrote in 2017 for Hachette you spoke about I think the importance of menu preparation
#
of deciding in advance what you are going to eat through the week and all of that and
#
that kind of brings me to my next question now one reason for doing that would obviously
#
be to save yourself from decision fatigue so rather than tire yourself out by thinking
#
what you are going to eat you can decide a menu for the week in advance and just go with
#
that but the other aspect of that is that what you are really doing there it seems to
#
me is setting out a process for yourself like one of my favorite self-help books of modern
#
times is James Clear's Atomic Habits where he talks about how it's more important to
#
have processes and goals that everybody can have great goals but the only people who achieve
#
those goals are the people who have great processes and it strikes me that you know
#
when one is eating it's you know more important to just build healthy eating habits over a
#
time through certain processes rather than set yourself a target like you know I will
#
eat so many calories every day or I will lose so much weight by this period of time and
#
all of that and those goals can get counterproductive and the goals alone can stress you out whereas
#
if you just internalize a self-image of yourself like I am a person who eats healthy I am a
#
person who eats at particular times and that's another thing you mentioned about your grandparents
#
that they ate at these fixed particular times during the day so like one I guess is a two
#
step process one you build a prism through which you look at food which you built in
#
which you've kind of outlined in your book as well and we'll talk a little more about
#
that now but and then once you build that prism you use it to build processes and then
#
everything takes care of itself is that an accurate description is that how you've sort
#
Yeah you're right because see healthy eating more than anything else it is the planning
#
that counts because I may have all the good intentions but when I open my fridge and the
#
first thing I see is like a desert in front of me and if I'm hungry I am going to reach
#
out for that I mean it's not willpower or anything it's just that it's there so what
#
you see is what you eat if I had planned a little bit better and if I had kept things
#
like a hummus or some vegetables or some fruits which are cut and ready in transparent containers
#
when I open the fridge that is what I see so that is the planning that you know telling
#
yourself what are you going to eat like even when they tell people to visualize your success
#
right like you imagine yourself going and doing all that so this kind of planning is
#
that I'm only telling myself tomorrow I'm going to eat this this this and you know if
#
we have told ourselves that that plan is already in place so when I get hungry I don't have
#
to think about what am I going to eat now because when you're hungry most likely the
#
decision you take will not be a correct decision anyway so for those times is when which is
#
why they also say that you never go for food shopping when you're hungry always go after
#
you've had your lunch and because that definitely impacts the way you think and the choices
#
you make so having a plan in place is the first step towards any kind of healthy eating
#
even if you're going to order out you tell yourself that these are the restaurants these
#
are the dishes and keep a list of them and you know that of all the other choices these
#
may be better so I'm going to order from these so and that's how you can even be prepared
#
stock up for these things and have all the things you need for a certain meal or something
#
already because then it's so tough if you want you have the intention you want to eat
#
something healthy but there is nothing available and when you open your fridge the only things
#
that you see are things that are not good for you then how is it going to help you stick
#
to your plan it's going to be so difficult so I try to follow that and of course all
#
this planning and prepping it does take so much time and effort and it is tough I'm not
#
saying no but if you keep doing this it kind of becomes a second habit like when you order
#
your groceries you also order a few couple of fruits or you know something like that
#
so yeah so that's that's a simple way to go about this the planning and processes and
#
being well prepared no and I guess there are ways to even outsource little bits of that
#
like when I was in keto I realized that there are these services in you know Mumbai and
#
I'm sure even Bangalore who'll provide you four keto meals a day so you don't actually
#
even have to think about it or there are apps where which will calculate the calories of
#
everything and tell you what you should have next to meet your macros and all of that my
#
next question is kind of about a theme that I've thought a bit about but I've only sort
#
of while chatting with you it struck me that it applies to food as well which is about
#
how you know along with the great technological advances we have had in these times all of
#
which are a blessing to us and have made our life so much better and which in fact are
#
enabling this conversation there are also some that have a flip side and the flip side
#
is that there is a lot of technology today for manipulation of the brain for example
#
in the context of social media everything becomes much more addictive that people have
#
sort of figured out and in my years as a professional gambler I kind of read up a lot on how casinos
#
do this also how the lights and the sounds and all of that will ensure that you keep
#
chasing the next dopamine rush and similarly you know social media also does that it's
#
meant to keep keep you on that dopamine like you know one of the things that some of the
#
apps did a few years ago I think they all probably do it now is that if you press the
#
back button you wouldn't go back the screen would refresh so you'd have more stories so
#
you simply can't get away you're kind of trapped and it strikes me that this also happens in
#
the context of food where our brain is drawn towards sweet food there are certain kind
#
of foods that we get addicted to like I really think that carbs in a sense are an addiction
#
this is an addiction that processed foods take advantage of they are not just designed
#
to be tasty or and they're not just designed to have some nutrition as and when they do
#
but they are designed to be addictive in fact that is a fundamental you know design imperative
#
of processed food because whoever is making them wants you to go out and buy them again
#
and again and again and this also makes them incredibly unhealthy and this is something
#
that you've also you know spoken about in your book so tell me a little bit about processed
#
foods and what can we do to fight them because a lot of processed foods are common everyday
#
foods like white sugar or tomato ketchup you know how should we reduce the kind of processed
#
foods we take are there any processed foods which are actually okay and you know what
#
is your approach to all of this?
#
See the processed food industry I'm sure they spend millions or billions of dollars
#
on just the science of creating an addictive combination in matters of flavor so people
#
just it's like that you can't eat just one tagline of lays right and that's how they
#
are designed to be and recently I was reading up on this thing about comfort foods right
#
the kind of foods that we reach out to when we are feeling low and we want to feel better
#
or etcetera and invariably a comfort food anywhere in the world will be a combination
#
of sugar, fat and carbs in some way and either one or two or all three of these it goes back
#
to when we were babies you know when we were agitated or when we would cry when we would
#
be hungry mothers would feed us breast milk or any milk bottled milk and that milk had
#
the same combination of sugars, fats and carbs that would instantly soothe us and babies
#
either go to sleep or they stop crying right so that same thing has continued as a part
#
of our evolution all into our adulthood where that same combination of food no matter what
#
the end result may not be milk at all it may be chips or it may be a dessert or it may
#
be pasta or whatever it is that same combination of compounds triggers off that same dopamine
#
kind of scenario in our brain where we feel soothed and comforted and the way we would
#
feel as babies so it is something as basic as that and no matter what diet somebody is
#
on they cannot be not comforted with these kind of foods and that's why it becomes all
#
the more a big struggle to avoid these things in my life I mean not anyone's life and you
#
know I often tell people that if I have to give up rice then I might as well give up
#
living because what am I going to do with my life if you tell me I can't eat rice ever
#
so I think this is definitely one aspect of it and the processed food industry takes maximum
#
advantage of the fact that these three compounds you give in any combination plus with the
#
added flavor molecules which they have done so much worth of research on they know that
#
people are going to be hooked to this product and in my book I have written about the very
#
basic corn flakes or the cereal that a lot of Indians have moved towards eating that
#
for breakfast because you just remove it from a box and you add some milk and you add some
#
fruit and you think it's healthy but compare a corn flakes to Bhutta or the full the corn
#
on the cob that we see in the monsoons and now pretty much see around the year so that
#
is the real food at least close to real because even that must have gone through some chemical
#
processes and whatever but each of those corn kernels the ectosperm or the skin is peeled
#
off then it is cooked then it is dried and then it is roasted and then it is flattened
#
and then it is packaged and in the middle of these processes you get all the additives
#
of sugar salt flavorings all the artificial strawberry fruit flavor or the chocolate flavor
#
and of course preservatives so that you can buy it and keep it even for one year nothing
#
will go wrong try to keep like a corn on the cob for one year in your fridge and see what
#
happens right so we don't even realize we think how I eat corn flakes this is called
#
a healthy brand of corn flakes and I've had it with milk and fruit and honey all of it
#
is very healthy so we feel happy that we've eaten something healthy but if we give a little
#
thought as to what process has gone behind you know from its natural form to the form
#
that you see it in front of you what are all the processes that have gone into it and it
#
could all have been avoided if you chose something as simple as a poha which is just rice which
#
has been flattened so the number of processes have been so less and then you make it in
#
whatever way you want right so even like in the Bengalis they just have that with milk
#
the poha right and some sugar so even that is much less processed than eating your processed
#
cereal so I think the first step is definitely awareness and again that question of mindfulness
#
comes in because if I'm in a hurry I'm just shaking that box of cereal into my bowl and
#
adding milk and eating it on the go where am I going to spend a minute thinking about
#
what how did this corn flakes come across and how did it become like this what is there
#
in it have I read the nutritional label do I know what ingredients these are do they
#
even sound like food so you know and like I said initially it may be a bit tiresome
#
because we are surrounded by things like this and I don't say it is easy at all to think
#
about everything that we put in our mouth then we say I'd rather be fasting because
#
this is too complicated but I think having this basic knowledge about at least 10-15
#
things that you eat on a regular basis and translating that knowledge into a second nature
#
by which you just know what is good you don't and I think human beings as a race we have
#
been innately using food as medicine we know what is good for us in the hunter-gatherer
#
thing they didn't have any barcode or app to tell them what is this how many calories
#
is this and stuff they just knew and I think over the last thousands of years we have moved
#
away so much from our inherent knowledge and trusting our own instincts that for everything
#
we have to either google or understand what is happening so I think as humans we have
#
lost the we have lost the knowledge or that inherent knowledge of what foods are good
#
for us what we should go for and I think we have distanced ourselves so much and a lot
#
of industries lobbies and all they are also responsible for that but we are also responsible
#
in a way that we have not been so careful we just think okay it's something I'm going
#
to eat it you don't realize that there is something external which you are putting into
#
your body which is going to become part of your body in the next 24 hours and you don't
#
give it that much importance so I think understanding food is more important than just trusting
#
these YouTube videos or these Instagram posts with millions of views where they just say
#
this is good this is bad very binary very yes and no kind of answers which is very easy
#
for people because it saves their time and their effort but do these people even know
#
your body do they know your lifestyle your culture because it is it is never a yes and
#
no it's never a binary it is so complicated and it is so personalized and it differs from
#
person to person so how can you just believe something that gives you such an oversimplified
#
information just because you don't want to spend time and invest that time into your
#
own health by understanding what you should eat because you are the only person who knows
#
what is best for you yeah and it strikes me that you know earlier we spoke of decision
#
fatigue and Steve Jobs and all of that and one of the ways people deal with decision
#
fatigue is something called satisficing which is a combination of satisfying and sufficing
#
where you are satisfied with something that suffices and a lot of people do satisficing
#
when it comes to their diet and that makes no sense because it's a question of what
#
you're putting inside your own body it is shaping the well-being of your future self
#
why on earth would you want to satisfy with that you can satisfy say if you're going
#
out to buy a new shirt or a toaster or whatever but when it comes to the food that you're
#
putting inside your own body you you should not be absent-minded you should not go with
#
the flow or you should not follow like you said what an influencer might say on Instagram
#
or YouTube unless that influencer is a Nandita Iyer and instead sort of think a little harder
#
for yourself by the way I'm half Bengali but despite that I like the thought of neither
#
poha nor milk nor sugar so that was for a moment I was a ghastly thought of a combination
#
now I'm reminded by something you said of this great book called behave by Robert Sapolsky
#
and and you know the listeners who will hark back to the first commercial of this episode
#
will realize that I've recommended a course by Sapolsky which is on the great courses
#
plus who are the sponsors of this fine episode so do check them out but Sapolsky's written
#
this great book called behave and what he does in behave is really interesting where
#
he'll take an action and then he'll explain the proximate reason for it and then he'll
#
go a little further back in time and explain a deeper reason for it which goes further
#
back and he'll go all the way back to how we are wired in prehistoric times and in a
#
similar sense I think when it comes for our addiction to packaged food you can go far
#
back like you went as far as a baby having the mother's milk but you know really I think
#
one has to go back to prehistoric times where you know when our brains were wired by natural
#
selection and the fact of the matter is you didn't know when your next meal was coming
#
from you didn't know when you're going to you know get you know kill the next deer as
#
it were or manage to find suitable food growing somewhere and therefore whoever had the instinct
#
to take in as many calories as they possibly can would be more likely to survive and therefore
#
more likely to propagate and therefore those genes kind of go forward into the world which
#
is why it's so hard for some of us to stop eating that you know we might be full even
#
after the stomach sends a signal to the brain that here you're full 20 minutes have passed
#
you're full you were full 20 minutes ago chill out and stop but still you'll continue you
#
know who can stop at one like in many ways we need to fight our own hardwiring and this
#
seems to be to be one of the ways let's talk about your book now before the entire sort
#
of conversation gets over and Nandita I hear fanboys and fangirls tell me that you spoke
#
to her for three hours and you didn't even ask her what are superfoods so I can't do
#
that obviously what was the impetus behind writing this specific book and what are superfoods
#
so the impetus behind writing the book is something we already discussed that in the
#
space of food and nutrition the misinformation is in abundance and oversimplified information
#
and you know trying to dumb down things to a level where they're no longer even true
#
and it would annoy me a great deal and you know typically how these algorithms on social
#
media and the internet work is that if people have watched this YouTube video a few million
#
times and no matter what you search for it will come up as the most watched recommendation
#
right so that misinformation cycle is just going on faster and faster and you know things
#
like you know drink this tea and lose weight in 20 kilos and there's so many such videos
#
it's not funny and you know I'm not saying that someone who does not have a health or
#
medical background cannot understand nutrition but it does help in understanding it at a
#
deeper level or understanding when you read certain studies journals papers you understand
#
the language you understand what they are trying to convey and you understand what is
#
verified versus just some you know legend going around the internet so you learn to
#
differentiate good from bad and it really helps so when people who have absolutely no
#
background purely because of internet fame and stuff and algorithms they just call themselves
#
experts and continue spreading misinformation it used to like trouble me a lot and I said
#
okay I am why not write something it speaks of moderation and not just in binaries and
#
trying to explain the complexity behind the science and also in a way provide the knowledge
#
to people and readers so they can take their own decisions and create their own diet plans
#
create their own menus and I don't want to force feed anything to people that is not
#
a part of their culture that is they cannot sustain for their whole life and this was
#
just this was the whole thinking behind the book is to create like a step-by-step hand
#
holding kind of approach where people understand that it's not straight jumping to a recipe
#
or a diet but first you need to understand what is your relationship with food how can
#
you improve your relationship with food then what are the ways in which you know that how
#
we eat aspect of things versus you know what are we eating and then talking about how certain
#
superfoods are good for certain conditions so while you may eat everything these things
#
may benefit you more I chose 39 superfoods to be a part of this using the criteria of
#
are they local are they easily available are they fairly inexpensive and is it processed
#
or unprocessed like I won't count orange juice as a superfood so using these criteria I chose
#
these but this is just a very small introduction of course through this people will also understand
#
that other similar you know if red grapes is good even green grapes are good and they
#
can build their own list and when they cook or they eat why not pick things which are
#
already so rich in nutrients that finally the dish that you cook will be very nutritious
#
for you rather than choose lesser nutritious ingredients which are not giving that much
#
nutrient per calorie so it is calorie rich but nutrient poor so why not when you are
#
cooking something make the most of the food that is easily available to us and then coming
#
down to describing each of these ingredients a little bit of history and the different
#
ways again anything that you call a superfood and you want to eat more of it throughout
#
your life it has to be a versatile ingredient it can't be just used in one particular dish
#
in a small quantity and then you are not going to get enough benefit out of it so things
#
like say a green moong or a pumpkin they are so versatile you can cook it in hundred different
#
ways and still come up with newer ways so talking about the different ways in which
#
people can include this in their diet in simple ways and then coming up with things like meal
#
prep because like we said planning is everything when it comes to healthy eating and if you
#
have meal prep these five six different things and it is in your fridge it is so easy to
#
put together a salad if you have already cooked some rajma or chana and you have some millet
#
and then you add that and then you have some shelled pomegranate you add that so and some
#
just lime juice and some olive oil and you have a hearty salad ready like less than five
#
minutes you don't have to do anything more than that like more than the time it takes
#
you to decide what to order on swiggy this is ready so that is the next chapter and then
#
I am definitely concerned about things like sustainability especially in the superfood
#
context because people tend to go crazy over one particular ingredient and that leads to
#
a lot of things like monocropping and people only focusing on growth farmers focusing on
#
growing that one thing because that is giving them more returns so which is why people have
#
to be eating more biodiverse produce not because it gives you more variety of nutrients but
#
also because it is good for the earth you don't want to go back to a situation where
#
turmeric is good for you so there is an industrialized farming of turmeric with heavy use of pesticides
#
and fertilizers then what good is that turmeric to you so you have to make sure that you have
#
to know how it is grown and to make sure that it is grown in a more gentler manner treating
#
the earth more gently you need to make sure that you are not running after only one ingredient
#
because that will force the whole ecosystem to change and produce more of just that so
#
and also all other aspects like what cookware are you using because that is another having
#
been in the blogging space for more than 15 years have a sense of the problems that people
#
face and the kind of confusions they have in choosing because earlier we had not much
#
choice in our grandparents time but now there is so much choice and is non-stick good is
#
aluminum good is you know stoneware good cast iron is good it is so heavy how am I going
#
to use it it gets rusted so many questions I have tried to simplify that as well and
#
also talk about certain very simple sustainable techniques that you can use in your day to
#
day life in your kitchen without spending too much but also making sure you have chosen
#
something that is better for the environment in the long run because it is not good to
#
only think of our human body and think of our health but then damage the planet's health
#
and so in a nutshell this is all that my book covers yeah and to sort of summarize one of
#
your points with apologies to non-Hindi speakers if we don't treat the earth well anarth ho
#
jayega so sorry for that I had to get away with one of these no what I kind of loved
#
about your book and why I would you know recommended everybody actually own a copy don't just
#
buy it on kindle but get the physical copy if you can as well and keep it with you and
#
why it's almost a collector's item is that it combines two things that I think you know
#
are difficult to find together one is that it is conceptually clear you know it's simple
#
language you know I get it all in fact your first couple of chapters especially where
#
you deal with people's relationship with food and how you need to reset that the importance
#
of you know mindfulness and the importance of thinking about where your food comes from
#
what it contains all of that I found that enormously useful and and that brings me to
#
the second aspect of what I really like about your book is that it is bloody useful you
#
know you're not just telling me what are the superfoods and why this is a superfood
#
have this but you're also giving useful tips on how to integrate it into our everyday sort
#
of cooking and all of that so how I will incorporate amla into my bacon and egg fried rice I have
#
still to figure out but maybe we can have an offline discussion about that but I found
#
it incredibly useful tons of recipes tons of you know guidance at a conceptual level
#
that you know X ingredient is great because of these reasons and hey here's what you can
#
do to you know put it into your diet so I am for that reason I found it kind of an important
#
book if you care about what you're putting into your body then please buy everyday superfoods
#
by Nandita Ayur so I have a handful of questions before I let you go not that you are a prisoner
#
I am saying before I let you go but you know what I mean and one of them is about social
#
media one of the things that you've done extremely well is that you've built without thinking
#
of yourself as a brand because I realized that over a period of time by doing all these
#
different things people talk about how I built my brand and I never thought of it like that
#
but you you're just true to yourself and you do a bunch of different things and it kind
#
of works out that way now you started of blogging with saffron trail which you know became very
#
I mean that it was the only food blog I think I actually knew of back in the day though
#
I must confess that I wasn't much into cooking so it wasn't like I was taking recipes of
#
it on a daily basis or such like but you started off by blogging and from there you then moved
#
on to you know to Instagram to Facebook to Twitter and you're doing interesting things
#
on all of them like you know you had a tweet and I'll ask you more about that on the kind
#
of food that one should eat during these go with times and your Twitter thread took a
#
very separate approach to it and on Instagram you took a very different approach to it so
#
you've got the same content but you're packaging it very differently so how did these different
#
medium shape your content as you went along and as it shaped your content did it also
#
change the way you started thinking about food or writing about food and and were there
#
aspects of it which you had to learn from scratch like the importance of the visual
#
for example like in actual food will today's MasterChef inspired kids will keep talking
#
about the importance of plating and how you eat through the eyes and all of that and on
#
Instagram it strikes me that you know it could be a photography blog where the photographer
#
has just happened to choose food because those are very enticing and beautiful pictures as
#
well what was that process like where you get into each of these forms and you start
#
figuring out what to do in this form to express yourself so to say actually I don't think
#
I have planned or thought much and I should have a little bit more because I joined Instagram
#
the day it was launched when it was launched only for iPhone users and by now I should
#
be having at least a million followers but I have like some 70,000 followers that is
#
because I don't really follow a plan or I don't have a schedule and I post what I cook
#
I mean I don't cook to post something great and I post what I eat because if I had to
#
do too much planning and there are so many platforms and there's something new coming
#
on all the time and I'm social media is not my main thing it just helps like I tell friends
#
I would have happily deleted Facebook and Instagram not Twitter if you know I wasn't
#
in the space because it's required to showcase your brand and yourself to this whole audience
#
and you lose out on that if you're not on these platforms so I just use it as something
#
that's essential I really don't have that time or bandwidth to create content specially
#
do things for Instagram alone although I do especially in the context of my new book I
#
have been thinking of a couple of ideas which may work in you know talking more about my
#
book without just being it like a salesy kind of pitch yeah regarding that covid series
#
that you were talking about I just I wanted it to be a Twitter thread at first but then
#
I said that like posting it as it was just more than 13 or 14 tweets and you know Instagram
#
gives you only 10 options to swipe through so if I took a screenshot of every tweet then
#
it would not fit into that whole 10 picture carousel so then I said okay let me write
#
things in one like keep it a shorter kind of a slideshow and that is purely because
#
of the kind of availability of space and the way it works and you know I was absolutely
#
clear I don't want to talk about my book or market anything in this scheme because it's
#
purely because I want to help people who are wondering what do we eat in these times and
#
I didn't want it to be anything about my book or my blog or no links nothing so it was purely
#
something which I thought I want to follow this and I think it's good for people who
#
are conscious and who are worried about what to eat in these times maybe it will give some
#
kind of guidelines and format on how to plan their food.
#
That said I think the platform that I truly enjoy is Twitter and although people keep
#
saying now toxic place and this and that but I think I've curated my crowd fairly well
#
and I either follow people who make me laugh or I get something to learn from that you
#
know or appears in my field where I know what they're doing and I can get some inspiration
#
from them so these are the only reasons for which I follow people on Twitter so I use
#
it in this way and it works for me and you know even for my first book I've written a
#
few articles and given a few talks on you know how to use Twitter what do you get out
#
of Twitter so when I check my blog stats it is the platform that I spent the least time
#
on which is Pinterest that gives me maximum views to my blog and Twitter where I spent
#
the most time on gives me the least number of views but everything is not tangible and
#
it gives me a lot of visibility and things like my first book it just got a lot of journalists
#
knew about this book it got written about and all that counts for a lot and people recognize
#
you in this space and then you build a circle of friends you know with whom you can have
#
a banter or you meet when they are in your city because you know when you're in your
#
30s and 40s it's just so difficult to make friends and maybe sometimes if you have a
#
kid you befriend their parents and that kind of thing but on your own how are you going
#
to even find like-minded people without being creepy and say let's be friends you know that
#
happens only on Twitter because it just you just gravitate towards like-minded people
#
so easily somehow I think that's the good thing about the algorithm of that platform
#
that it just brings you together and whatever the reasons I love being on that platform
#
connecting with people and also learning so much about a diverse range of things which
#
I would not have been exposed to otherwise because I'm not going to pick up a book on
#
say policy or economics because that's not some that's not my subject and I think I may
#
not understand that but when you read about it on Twitter you at least get an inkling
#
of what's happening you're not a complete dumbo in the other subjects you know a little
#
bit about everything I think that's very important you know in general to know about things and
#
Twitter really feeds that curiosity in me so it is my favorite platform.
#
You know I kind of mirrored that it's a platform I'm most active on and parts of it are very
#
toxic but you just need to curate your field and decide on the kind of interactions you
#
I mean one of my thumb rules I block a lot and one of my thumb rules is earlier it was
#
trolling then it was rudeness now it is simply if someone says something to me on Twitter
#
which they would not say to me in person I block them because those are not the kind
#
Absolutely I do the same and on Instagram recently when I said that everybody must go
#
out and take their vaccines I was told that I am being a bully on the internet for forcing
#
people to get vaccinated because people may have their own reservations against the vaccine
#
and like this was the first thing I read when I opened my phone in the morning and I said
#
serves you right for opening your phone like first thing in the morning and checking Instagram
#
comments from strangers and I instantly blocked this often because it's like this my social
#
media is my home why will I let someone come into my home abuse me for no reason and then
#
still want to continue reading my content and being a part of my circle.
#
So if I wouldn't want that person in my home I wouldn't want that person reading or understanding
#
all that useful content that I keep posting for free so they have no business reading
#
that so I just block and earlier I would feel bad and you know sometimes friends say you
#
are giving them too much you know space in your head they will think you are giving them
#
too much importance I said I don't care if that hurts me I am blocking them.
#
So I think that really works well for me and there is no why should I force you know unpleasant
#
things into my head it's not like I am not that kind of a person.
#
Exactly no I block liberally and sometimes some random Bhakt will say but how can you
#
say you are for free speech if you are blocking and the point there is that has nothing to
#
do with free speech you are free to speak wherever you are but you are not entitled
#
to my attention and it is exactly if I am allowing you on my timeline it is exactly
#
like you said that I am allowing you into my home and if I don't want you in my home
#
I am entitled to kick you out and you can say whatever you want outside or on your own
#
platform or whatever so I think we should all be kind to ourselves and be careful of
#
who we let into our mind space so to say so I try to curate that carefully.
#
Now I will link to this excellent thread of yours on what to eat in these covid times
#
in the show notes so I meant to ask you about that but because we are running out of time
#
I will do the Karan Johar thing right I have never done a Karan Johar kind of rapid fire
#
so you know I am afraid you don't get a hamper at the end of it and if I did have a hamper
#
to give you I would have to ask you to curate it because who better but here is a rapid
#
fire anyway and it is only four little questions and the first of them is a thought experiment
#
that look why do we eat we eat to live right in a sense we need certain nutrients to keep
#
our body going so if in an imagined future and I think there have been thought experiments
#
like this before somebody could just give you a pill in the morning and that satiates
#
you that takes care of all your nutritional needs your body doesn't need to eat anything
#
after that during the day and if you want pleasurable sensation of taste then you have
#
things like a bacon pill you eat that and for fifteen minutes you feel the taste of
#
bacon in your mouth or whatever the case might be it is a thought experiment right we can
#
get away with this shit so would that kind of world seem utopian or dystopian to you
#
does it seem absolutely wonderful absolutely horrible at present I welcome that thought
#
because I am kind of fed up of cooking every day so I would just devote my time into all
#
other fun things that like music and other things that I enjoy and not be at the you
#
know in the kitchen the whole day so utopian right now wonderful and the interesting thing
#
is you know you pointed out that in 98 in your book you pointed out that in 98 percent
#
of Indian households a primary cook is a woman so I think men and women might just answer
#
this question differently where the men will say nahi yaar wo swad chahiye paratha ka and
#
the woman will be like bivi ke haath ka khaana nahi to maa ke haath ka khaana and the woman
#
will be like I am not making no more parathas ok next question what is what according to
#
you is a criminally underrated item of food you can give multiple items I think I would
#
say daal because in Indian cuisine we just end up making like daal to go with rice but
#
it is very versatile and we don't explore the so many different things that you can
#
end up making with that and we treat it like very careless rose ka kind of stuff but there
#
is a huge potential to play around with that ingredient ya so even that phrase ghar ki
#
murgi daal bharabar should therefore be changed it should be ghar ki daal murgi bharabar is
#
basically what you are saying ok next question most overrated food biryani oh god this feels
#
like a personal assault on me but I will forgive you this for that I would have said bacon
#
but I didn't say I didn't want to be so personal but by now saying that I am not saying bacon
#
you have said bacon also so well done bacon bhi gaya biryani bhi gaya ok well what can
#
we do ok and final question as the show ends why not end on a nice note that at some point
#
in time we are going to reach a phase where people can go out and eat again and restaurants
#
are open again and there are joys to dining out especially with friends and loved ones
#
so what are your favorite restaurants in the two cities I know a little bit of in the ones
#
that you have lived in which are mumbai and bangalore what are your favorite restaurants
#
which you feel people must try so I will talk about Bombay I love this place called Sika
#
Osiko is it in I think kamla mills compound it's a mexican cuisine and it's fairly authentic
#
it's not like substituting rajma in every dish so they even have you know corn mold
#
I forget it's got a very complex sounding mexican name for it so it's the mold that
#
grows on corn and that's like a delicacy and very expensive so they use ingredients like
#
those to create like the authentic mexican flavors so I'll go with that one and in bangalore
#
I mean I would day any day vote for the dosa because I try as I might I can't get the similar
#
kind of dosa experience here so anything like a CTR or that kind of one of those traditional
#
dosa places I am dying to go there but these they are always so crowded I haven't stepped
#
out in over a year thank you so much I mean this conversation at least for me was like
#
a feast and thank you so much for your time and indeed your patience thank you it was
#
lovely chatting with you and you know enjoying your podcast for such a long time and I am
#
happy that I got to be a part of this if you enjoyed listening to this episode head on
#
over to your nearest online bookstore and pick up everyday superfoods by Nandita Ayyar
#
other relevant links are in the show notes you can follow her on twitter at saffron trail
#
and you can follow me on twitter at amit varma a m i t v a r m a you can browse past episodes
#
of the scene in the unseen at scene unseen dot i n and hey while you are doing so while
#
you are binge listening to the show which you certainly should don't also binge eat
#
some nonsense pay attention did you enjoy this episode of the scene in the unseen if
#
so would you like to support the production of the show you can go over to scene unseen
#
dot i n slash support and contribute any amount you like to keep this podcast alive and kicking
