CIIS Public Programs Podcast

transcript

[Theme Music]

This is the CIIS Public Programs Podcast, featuring talks and conversations recorded live by the Public Programs department of California Institute of Integral Studies, a non-profit university located in San Francisco on unceded Ramaytush Ohlone Land. Through our programming, we strive to amplify the voices of those who have historically been under-represented.

This week, we are revisiting an episode from our archives featuring a conversation with author and chef Nik Sharma originally recorded on December 4th, 2018. To find out more about CIIS and public programs like this one, visit our website ciis.edu and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

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Richard: Good Evening. Good evening to all of you. Thank you for coming out tonight. It's quite an exciting opportunity to celebrate the creation of this beautiful book. I mean, it's just stunning and I was so happy it even ended up on my doorstep, and I started looking through and thinking oh my gosh, and I get to meet you, and I get to talk to you, and I get to ask you questions. And maybe we could start though kind of going back to your early life in India and maybe we could you talk a little bit about your parents? We spoke a little bit about where they were from, and talk maybe a little bit how they met and then…[Nik: Of course, yeah]

Nik: So, I was born and brought up in Bombay. I still say Bombay even though it's changed to Mumbai because when I left that's is what it was called, and their airport code is BOM. [Richard: laughs] So, I just stick with it.

So, I was born and brought up in Bombay in a suburb called Bandra, right by the Arabian Sea. My mom is Roman Catholic and my dad's Hindu. My dad's from the North, from a state called Himachal Pradesh in a small town called Mathura and my mom's was born and brought up in Bombay, but her family was from Goa. And so, they were very different, their families were really different. And they had a love marriage which is kind of unusual. When you think about the whole concept that is sold about India, you know, you hear about arranged marriages all the time. So, they had different faiths, different backgrounds, two different parts of the country. They spoke different languages, but they fell in love and they met in Bombay when my dad moved to Bombay. They worked at the same company, fell in love, and my mother actually ran away to be with my dad because she knew her family wouldn't approve, and both families didn't speak for I want to say for about four and a half to five years after I was born. So, it was interesting just to you know, grow up in that dynamic and even I remember as a child, visiting one of my uncles on my dad's side in Bombay, and every time I would come into the house, he would shut the door and go inside. He would, he had taken a vow not to speak to my dad. He does now, but it was just kind of one of those weird things where as a child you see these things and you don't know why they're happening why it's such a big deal and it was really never discussed with me. I think because my parents didn't want me to have any biases or you know, feel like I symbolized something that shouldn't have been.

So, my parents obviously because they hadn’t had an arranged marriage, things were very liberal. They couldn't really point fingers at me. I have a younger sister, so they couldn't really point fingers at us in what we wanted to do in life, because you could easily throw that back at them. And then I want to say…after maybe…a year after my sister was born things had like calmed down. We were, everybody was talking, everyone was fine. I think grandchildren kind of do that, where everybody kind of calms down and they move on with life as you, one should.

The other interesting thing was because my parents came from different faiths, the cultures were really different. My dad came from a Brahmin Hindu family, which was very dairy-centric, their diet. There were things, the food was very vegetarian. I mean, it was vegetarian except for family members that had moved away, and some of them ate meat, but everyone on my dad's side ate vegetables, and there was a lot of dairy in their food. We would go visit my dad's side of the family in the North, and I remember my grandmother would not allow eggs, and she was widowed, and this is something that I learned much later in life that she couldn't eat…she had taken a vow not to eat onions and garlic, because it's considered an increased….those are considered ingredients that increase sexual arousal, and as a widow, you shouldn't do that. And so, she had taken that vow by herself and you know, even though the kids told her you should. She would cook with it, but for her, the kids, or whatever else, but wouldn't eat that. She used an ingredient called Asafoetida, or Hing, to create that same taste. And so that was something really for me, very interesting.

The other thing was when my mom would come with us to visit—and my mom hated going there—um, but my grandmother would never take water from my mom, or anything my mom cooked because she said my mother was unclean because she ate meat. So, they would like a lot of these interesting cultural exchanges happening and you watch it as a child thinking okay. It's kind of funny. Like she doesn't want water for my mom. You know, it's weird, but then my mom's side of the family now, they were really interesting because they were much more liberal.

They had all grown up in a large city like Bombay, which is such a big metropolis. You've had historically people coming in—because it was a trade city, a big Port—you had people coming in from all over the world from the British to the Portuguese. Then you also had the Africans coming in for centuries, and so a lot of things had made their way. And so, Bombay has historically been a very, I wouldn't say completely liberal, but definitely a large city with a lot of ideas were coming together.

And in Bombay you could go out. I remember as a kid. It's one of the safest cities also for women. Where you could stay out late at night by yourself and you, you're safe. Depending on where you are in the city, its restaurants are open late at night. It's kind of like New York in its own way, but you know restaurants are open late, you get food from all over the world. There are a lot of different things happening, and consequently living in Bombay, and just by the nature of both my parents, we were allowed to explore food. Nothing was ever told to us like, okay, it's meat, don't eat this, or don't eat that…definitely like all good parents, they try and force things on you. I hate certain kinds of squashes because my dad insisted that we had to, I had to eat that growing up. And so, I still don't do certain things like turnips. I hate turnips. You'll never see me write a recipe about turnips or even cook turnips in this lifetime. [Richard and audience laugh] It's not going to happen. So, there is certain things. Yeah, that I've pulled baggage on.

But growing up in that household was really interesting because I thought that was the norm, when you don't have a comparative endpoint, that becomes your comparative end point what you grew up with. And a lot of my friends did not come from mixed faith backgrounds in India. So, it was interesting that they would only celebrate one particular holiday. On the other hand, in my family we would celebrate a lot of the Christian holidays as well as a lot of the Hindu holidays, not all of them because my dad's family was living in America and London at the time, or and a few of them were still up North, but we didn't have that much interaction. So, my dad did what he could to the best of his abilities to introduce us to festivals like Diwali, you know, all the fun festivals, because I think that's more exciting for a child.

And then my mom's family, we did everything. So, my mom's family was, I wouldn't say strict, but my grandmother and my grandfather really adhere to certain things, like where we couldn't eat meat on Fridays because that's a very Roman Catholic tradition that's done, even if it's not Good Friday. You just do it throughout the year. And so, a lot of these traditions were things that I took for granted, you don't pay attention to them.

And then the food that they would introduce us to was obviously food that they grew up with. So you Have my mother cooking her food which was from Goa, which was more Eurocentric, Eurocentric more meat driven, coconut-focused, you'd have vinegar. And then you'd have my dad's food, which was heavily, you know, there was ghee in it, there were vegetables, a lot of stuff was fried. Okay, you know because that's what he likes, and you'd have all of these things sitting at the table and I thought it was normal, but then I go to my friend's house houses, and as I got older, they would have food only from one place. So, it was a very interesting dynamic to see kind of this to this weird mix of dishes, which I thought was normal and then I go to everyone else's houses thinking that were weird that they only had stuff from one place, and I couldn't understand why.

But it's also not that uncommon, if you think about the history of India. India's been a country or rather large region, for the longest time where people were coming from all over the world. You had the Persians, you had, you know, the British, the Portuguese, the French, the Dutch all these countries were coming in and introducing elements that had slowly over centuries become a part of Indian cuisine. You've got the Chinese that were coming to Calcutta, and they created the Indo-Chinese cuisine, and you know, it's kind of…it makes sense…things adapting and acclimating and expressing themselves over time.

So, you know, I grew up in Bombay, and then I went to high school there. I didn't grow up rich, in fact, I grew up in a studio apartment because Bombay is an expensive city and real estate is, it's crowded. It's real estate’s expensive. The options for careers are also limited because everyone's fighting for the same price. There's just it's just not a lot of resources, and my parents weren’t wealthy either, we were kind of, I would say it would be low middle class here, but that would be up, I guess upper middle. Not quite sure what now, what the dynamic is, but we were never lacking for anything. I will say this, and you know, I went to high school in Bombay. I went to a Catholic High School and that's kind of like how the course of my life went where I was experiencing things from a very different cultural perspective. So, it was a very Roman Catholic upbringing at school and then you had this double dynamic going on at home, and the other thing that started to happen when I was in high school was, I was finding…I found myself attracted to men.

Which I didn't know anyone who was gay at the time, and the only, it had come up in conversations with my parents where they knew people were gay. And the only people that they knew were celebrities and surprisingly all three of them were musicians. My, it was George Michael, Elton John, and Freddie Mercury. Those were the three gays that my mother knew. [Richard and audience laugh] And for the longest time I thought if you're gay, you automatically have to be a musician and I knew I couldn't sing! [Richard and audience laugh] So it just never made sense to me and I said, you know what there's something like not fitting either you're not gay, or you have to be a musician like it has to be this has to fit this equation needs to make sense. [Audience continues to laugh softly]

So, but as you get older, you get a little more sensible, you start to get curious as to why you attracted to men. And I…I think I was displaying different kind of mannerisms in school. I was definitely nervous, and at the same time I was also very bookish because I was very uncomfortable. I was in an all-boys school and kids in general are cruel and I could see, I would get picked on quite a bit because I was tiny, you never never fight back, and I would get bullied a lot and I hated school. So, I moved into books. I would spend my afternoons at the live school library going through books and that's when I I kind of did my research and said I need to find out what's, why am I attracted to men? Because it's one of those things where it's very electrifying, but it's also very terrifying. And in India the stuff so I as I started to look into things you would read in the newspapers or hear on TV about how someone was either beaten up by the police or you know, like beaten up in villages. They were killed or their family members would behead them. You just hear all these crazy stories, and it was frightening because I didn't know at the time where the…what did anyone actually have a success story? Beyond the three musicians that my mother spoke about. [Richard and audience laugh softly] And I couldn't, I didn't feel comfortable enough talking to my parents about it. I didn't feel comfortable talking to my cousins about it. And so, there was just no one. And so, I started to look into books or media to kind of find out what was going on, and back then the internet also wasn't a big part of our lives. So books were predominantly what I you know, kind of went to find out what was going on and luckily I had access to that.

The other thing that started to happen at the same time because I was so bookish, and India you are kind of pushed into one direction career-wise at a very early age. You're pushed into either medicine, into engineering, or some kind of business, or maybe law. Law and business that kind of, one of those things if you couldn't get in the first two, then you know consider law or business. And my parents really wanted me to be a physician because everyone on my dad's side, I would say maybe 80% of my cousins are physicians. So, they thought it would be a natural kind of fit. Let him go there. And I was really happy. I had as a child, I had started to develop an interest for biology and chemistry. I was really excited to see things change in front of me and this is when I didn't realize that I was also being drawn towards cooking, because they were such experimental fields to begin with and I think the natural curiosity of the science drew me into both.

I would go through my mother's drawer. She had this huge drawer in a cabinet where she kept recipes, cutouts from old newspapers, magazines, and a couple of cookbooks that she I think her goal was to cook from them after she got married. Funny enough, my mother actually hates to cook, and which is probably why I kind of started to overcompensate as a child because I was sick of eating the same thing. [Richard laughs] And in India, we also have this culture where the, we have maids, so my parents would have a maid that would come to cook, and that was it. She would come from a certain time to a certain time, cook, and then leave. That was a thing and I also got fed up with that. And no one wanted to do anything, and my mom would say you just like eating fancy food all the time. And I said, no, it's not that it's I'm just really sick of what you cook! [Richard and audience laugh] And I started to go through her stuff. I would get Thursdays off from high school and Saturdays were my half-day. Thursday no one was at home. I was left alone, which was fantastic. So, I could go through her stuff and then start tinkering in the kitchen.

And I started small, obviously a lot of mistakes were made. I remember one of the things that early on I started to do was to fry an egg. That was probably the first thing I learned to cook from my mom, and once she felt comfortable that I could handle this gas stove, she let me kind of venture out and you know, I didn't cut myself that often, so it was okay. And so I started going through her, these recipes that she had amassed. They were big tomes. Like I think I remember there were three binders this big, and I would start going through them and she had all these interesting things, and then some of them had photos, and having not traveled outside the country that had become my passport to the world, because encyclopedias were my number one Christmas gift that I asked for every year. And no one had to ask me what I wanted. They knew he wanted an encyclopedia so he would get an encyclopedia. And then cookbooks they just threw me into a whole ‘nother world where I would see people eating different, beyond and there were things that I had never heard of at the time. I didn't know what a turkey was you know, I grew up eating meat, so I knew what ham was, chicken, but turkey like what is a turkey? And then even the way people at the time, and it's not done anymore, but people would flute the poultry with the little chef's hat made of paper on the legs. No one does that anymore, but that was the thing that was done a long time ago, and it was just fascinating to see all these different prep, like practices happening, and I said I want to do that. How do I do that?

So, I started to cook. And at the same time, I had also started to experiment with actual experiments in the house. I got my first chemistry kit, and I learned about, I remember in high school, exothermic reactions and I said, oh something can get hot and ended up burning up a couple of sheets in the house, got in trouble for that. But I realized my path at that point was going in the scientific direction, my parents were really excited, they said “oh, he’s going to go into medicine.” And so, I started pursuing that as a career field.

My mother went back to work after she had my sister and she felt that we were old enough to be left on our own. And whenever we had our days off from school, we would go to my grandmother's house on my mom's side and she lived close by, so wasn't like we were really left alone, but my mother went back and started to work. My dad was already working. My dad was a photographer working in advertising. And my mom on the other hand, decided to go back to school, and she at the time, computers were kind of becoming a thing, and so she got a degree in that and then started to work in hospitality and management, which is kind of funny because she hates to cook, and she landed up there.

And I was also interested in cooking and I think when I was in my early teens, I told her I said, “So I'm you know, I am considering maybe going into culinary school.” And she said, “No.” She said, “I don't think you have the personality to sit in a cold room and peel onions all day long. I just don't see you doing that, like your fingers getting cut, bleeding. You just don't have the stamina to deal with that.”

So, I said fine she's going to shut me down. So, I my dad's also an artist by training, and I can draw well, I can't paint well, but I can draw decent and he said, “I don't think you should go into an artistic field because I've done that, and you really have to be a hustler and you don't have that in you.”

So, this is like this whole self-confidence thing from my parents, right? [Richard and audience laugh] And so they said you should just like stick with this, focus on medicine. So, I said fine, and I did enjoy lab in school. I loved it. I loved, you know, like the making your microscopic slides, and looking at cells and you know, doing those experiments because both cooking and just doing an experiment, they're both research and their own way. And I didn't think about it too much at that time. I said, oh, you know, this is why I actually like it, but I ended up then going, getting accepted into a pre-med program in India, and that's what I was doing.

So, I got a degree in microbiology and biochemistry, and then went on to get a masters in Bombay in biochemistry, medical biochemistry. But at the same time at this point, I had kind of understood that I was gay and just seeing…annoying that this you know, living in Bombay I didn't know what my future was in terms of not only being openly gay and living a happy life, and I knew my parents wouldn't push me into marrying anyone. But I would watch my friends who are straight, and they would go to, it was the little things, you know, you watch your friends who are straight going to proms, you know with a date that they wanted to be with. I would have to go with a friend that I really did not want to be with. I mean, I like my friend, but I just didn't want to be with her at this thing. And I'm sure she didn't want to be with me either, but we couldn't really talk about it and you're sitting there and it's no fun, honestly, and I wanted to get out of that. But I also wanted a better future, and I knew that science would be my exit, my passport basically on my plane ticket to get out.

So, I started to study really hard and I was in the University of Bombay getting a master's in medical biochemistry. And I applied in the first year. I took my standardized tests, you know, and I think a lot of Indian kids do like taking standardized tests. [Richard and audience laugh] It’s, we just love, it's like the play the dog game as I was told. [Richard and audience laugh] So I did that and then, I didn't, I got my parents weren't rich enough to send me to school. You know pay for my education. So, my dad told me it's either full scholarship or you don't go. So, I said shoot like what do I do? Like if I stay here my life is like, I don't know what's going to happen. Do we think about that or what? So, I applied the first time I got a partial scholarship in New York and my dad said no, I'm only paying for your plane ticket. Fine. So, he said you can apply again. Maybe you need more experience or whatever. So, I said shoot do I think about failing? Because once you think about failing then it opens up room for thinking about backup plans, and I don't want to do that. So, I said no you're not going to think about that. You just have to get out. That is, it. And so, the second time around I worked my (if I can say this word) worked my ass off. They can beep that out…

[Audience laughing]

Richard: I think they've heard that word before. [Richard and Nik laugh]

[Audience laughing]

Nik: So, I worked really hard just to get experience. Because I didn’t have to take my tests again, my scores were fine. But I lacked enough experience to make up for that, because academic systems are different, the number of yours in school. So, I had to do that. And the second time round I think I applied to 30 schools. I got into 25 of them all with full financial aid. So, I was I said, I am leaving and getting out. So, I decided to go to the University of Cincinnati, and I was accepted into a program in molecular genetics, and I went there.

And I knew I was going to come out soon, because I had internally accepted that I was gay. I knew I wasn't going to that wasn't going to change, but you're still coming to terms with it, and within the first I want to say three to four months I came out to my closest friend at school. And I had to come out to my family. In the meantime, I kind of told my sister. I told my cousins. And then I said, I just don't know how to tell my parents. This is difficult because it's very easy talking to someone who I think is on the same age kind of in that same age bracket as you because the experiences are similar, you're watching the same TV shows and stuff like that. So, it's it's easier to relate, but my parents, you know, my didn't and…but there were signs I'm sure. Like my mother and I would watch a lot of musicals together. We would go to shows together. So, there were obvious signs, and everyone in the family said we kind of guessed. So, I said, okay, so then I had to come out to my family. I didn't know how to do it. So, I sent my parents an email because I just didn't want to deal with it, and I blamed the time difference.

[Audience laughing]

Richard: It is 12 and a half hours difference.

Nik: Yeah, like a day ahead.

[Audience laughing]

Nik: Right, so I could use that as an excuse. So, I did that and my I was okay because he said he went to art school and he says, you know in art school you meet a lot of people who are exploring. So, it's fine. I didn't know what that meant, I left it at that. [Audience laughing] My mom on the other hand had a really hard time because she comes from such a conservative Catholic Family. And because she had a love marriage, she thought she was being, I was being punished, and in a way, she was being punished because of what she had done by marrying my dad, which was kind of silly.

So, it took a couple of months, we were still talking, but she had a really hard time. And then the fortunate thing was that all my aunts and uncles from her family were extremely supportive and cool with it. So they were the ones actually helping, like stepped in and totally like you need to support him right now. It's not really about, it's got nothing to do with that. So, you need to get over that. And you know, I was one of the fortunate people that kind of had a lucky experience where my family didn't disown me. It is not uncommon, and I know I still remember in school knowing a couple of people that were from different countries in India and I had a friend who was also from China and they were gay, but they couldn't talk to their families. And so, they had this one life that was going on and then a whole ‘nother life when their families would visit or they would visit them, and that was something that I knew I never wanted to do. I never wanted to have an arranged marriage where I was married to a woman and not only would I then destroy her life, but I would also, it's just doesn't make any sense. And I remember early on my dad telling me a story about one of his co-workers. She was married to someone who he thought was gay. They never lived together, and he said they had, this, the couple had this relationship where they could see other people, but my dad always suspected, he told me this after I came out, and he said I always suspected that they had this arrangement and they had a child together just to prove to each other's families that you know, they were a straight couple.

And I told him I said I just cannot do that because It's not only your life at that point. Then you're bringing other people into the equation and it just, it just isn't me. So, I had their support, and then I was also really fortunate when I was at the University of Cincinnati, at the College of Medicine. There was a supportive network of professors. One of my professors, my immunology professor was gay, and I knew he was gay, so had actually come out to him, and he said, you know, I'll kind of walk you through this thing if you need any emotional support, I’m there for you. And he also introduced me to a program that was in the school for medical students who are gay or questioning. And what they would do they would have these potlucks once a month at a professor's house when they would kind of, it was a very casual atmosphere. Nothing was really discussed. But everyone who came in there was a lesbian, or queer or transgender person in the school, and everyone was very supportive of each other. So, I started to build this network of friends who kind of became family for me, away from family. So, I was able to relate, and converse with them about what they went through what I was going through, and it was very helpful at the same time.

I was also in the Midwest. And living in the Midwest coming out, I come from Bombay, which was such a large city. And then I was in Ohio, in Cincinnati, which was much smaller, which is kind of surprising because my impression of America at the time having not traveled is like every city is huge. And…which is not the case…the populations are also so different, right? And so, the ratio, number of people per what is it, per square mile or something is also this so different. So, it was very, I wasn't lonely in that sense of not seeing people because I'm also an introvert, but it's also diff-different when you want to connect with more people and you kind of…I wanted to learn about the culture because I'm thrown into this new country that I’ve been excited to move to. I wanted to experience America for what it was, I had heard so much about it through movies, through TV shows. Everyone knows I love Buffy, you know you brought Buffy up earlier today…[Richard laughs] Buffy the Vampire Slayer. So, you know, there were all these things that I was watching, and it builds this notion in your head and I kind of wanted to experience that.

So, I had started to, you know my friends, we would go out. I started to experience America through food. I would save all my money, we didn't get paid a lot on a graduate stipend, so we go out to restaurants kind of experience Greek food, Italian food, which I think a lot of people take for granted, but for me things tasted so different because if you have Italian food in India, it's very different from the way it tastes in America. It's very different from the way taste in Italy, right? And the same thing with Indian food vice versa. So, it was really interesting just to start to notice these new tastes, these new textures, these new names, these new dishes. It was very exciting for me and I really started to enjoy that. And I started to cook at home, because I had friends that wanted to eat Indian food. But at the same time I also wanted to learn how to cook those dishes. So I started to do that in grad school. And when I started to do that a lot of my friends would say cook us a traditional Indian meal and I didn't know what that was, because I didn't grow up traditionally, so I couldn't serve them what they wanted clearly because when we would go to restaurants everybody would get naan, or they would get a curry, or tandoori chicken. Those would things that even in India, I went out to restaurants and ate them, and I don't have, I mean I like, you know, those were things maybe my aunt's cooked on a special occasion. My dad may have tried something, but it wasn't something like naan was something that I never saw anyone make it home, and it was very difficult for me to explain those things to people. So that was kind of the first time where I felt, wow there's this whole gap of what India means to people and what's perceived in the West.

Another experience was in grad school when I was rotating in labs. One of my, I was eating pasta, and my professor came up to me and said “Hey, did you, that smells really good. What kind of curry sauce is that?” And I looked at him and I said, “No, it's-it's marinara sauce from Kroger.” And but that also created the impression for me that everything I touched, like the Midas kind of touch. It's like a curry touch, [Richard and audience laugh] everything I touch was becoming curry, and at that time I still wasn't looking into getting into food by any means.

What happened at the time was the government had moved funding from research, and they will move discretionary funding, and it was moving into defense because we were at war with the Middle East, and I started to notice my professors who were well-established, you know, they're published a lot of papers, several degrees. They were losing lab funding and losing labs, and it was kind of horrific for me because I had given up everything to move here and then everything suddenly seem shaky. So, what so I felt very nervous about a career in science. I'd also come out, I was uncomfortable. I still needed to accept it for myself, and I wanted to take a break. So, I passed my qualifying exams. And then I said, I could go through this or I could just quit and just refresh, and that's what I did. I quit much to the annoyance of my parents, and I said, you know what? I'm just going to walk away with a master's degree, not get my doctorate, and leave.

So, I came to…get a job at Georgetown in D.C. I wanted to be in a bigger city. And so, I moved to D.C. I didn't want to go to New York. I was kind of scared about New York because I said, oh my gosh, I don't think I can afford to live in New York, and it also so I really wanted to do it, but it just felt like at that stage in my life D.C. would probably be a good compromise. And so, I moved to D.C., I also had a bit of family there, I move to D.C., got a job at Georgetown, and I started doing medical research there. So, I was working on people and testing drugs. So, it was exciting because I was working with patients now so I could see things that were tangible. But again, the same thing started to play, research funding.

It was being wiped out again and again, and people were losing these large NIH R01 grants for millions of dollars, and then labs were being shut down, people were moving. So, it felt like a very high-risk business, something that my parents had always stressed out on being such a stable field, suddenly became one of the most riskiest things to be in because you're really not in control of where your money comes from, and I didn't like that, that really turned me off. I thought living in D.C. and then interacting with a lot of people in public policy and politics I would actually live in D.C. So, I thought why not let's go and get another degree, so which is probably, and I don't advise people to do that now, but I was working in Georgetown during the day and then I decided I was going to go full time and get a degree in public policy. So, I went to Georgetown School of it's now called the McCourt Public Policy School, got into that and so I would do both simultaneously and it was exciting, it was fun because I was meeting new people. But again, at the same time, it was morning academia, night academia, and as much as I like taking standardized tests, it got really boring. I started, I was also cooking for friends that I had made over there, and then one thing led to another, and my friends started to say, “Why don't you write a blog?” And I said, “I don't know what a blog is.” And so, a couple of my friends [Richard and audience laugh] yeah, introduced, and that by this time computers have become a thing. [Richard and audience laugh] Okay, so I know I started off saying the computers weren’t a thing and now they were a thing so…

Richard: So, it’s internet instead of encyclopedia.

Nik: Yeah…and what would happen, when I got it through my friends got introduced to a couple of blogs, and in experiments at the lab you would have these long incubation periods where you're waiting for, vaccines, I was making vaccines at Georgetown. So, if I was you know waiting for the virus or whatever to do its thing and then you'd have like eight hours to do nothing. So, I would sit on the computer and then go through blogs and blogs are so visual, even then back then. They were highly visual by people were taking these fantastic photos about traveling to these places. I would look at photos from India and say, oh my gosh, that is so exotic. [Audience laughing] Like I haven't seen this side to India, and like what how did I miss out on this? And so, it was really exciting. So, I was spending hours and then I would get really upset when I would reach the end the absolute end or rather the first post of a blog. There was no more content for me to peruse, and it started to catch on I said, this is exciting. Maybe there's something to be said for writing a blog and but I said, I really don't know computers except for doing my usual spreadsheets or writing things in Word, and then I don't know how to take photos because even though my dad was a photographer growing up, I didn't learn how to use a camera. In fact, I hated cameras as a child, his equipment was always an eyesore to my mother and to me because we would always step over stuff and then he'd yell at us because it was so expensive, you'll damage it. So, we were never allowed to touch it.

I guess the apple doesn't fall too far away from the tree though, and I started my first blog which was actually called Anatomy of Cooking. I did that for a couple of months, and I thought I was going to approach food from this science perspective and everything. It was too much work. And I gave it up. I said, you know, I'm not doing this. Couple of months later I'm started dating my now husband and we, on the first trip to visit his family, he told his mom that I had started to write a blog, and they live on a rural farm somehow, she knew about blogs and she said no, I think you should write a blog. They don't get good internet, for the longest time they had dial-up and I think the past maybe three years they've moved to high speed, but it's really bad because everyone uses were in the digital age, right? Everyone's using data. So, if all of us get on the phone at the same time, it just crashes. It's so sad, still. They live in Virginia and North Carolina on a farm.

And she said I think you should go back to do a blog. So, I said, okay, but my photos are crappy and she said well, maybe you need to practice, you know, get a good camera. And so, I looked at him, and I said, okay like your mom's like insisting, so I should do this. So, it's right. So, I looked into it and I said, let me do this in a little bit more respectful like in a more respectful manner like ever all these like fancy people are doing it. Maybe I should do it in get close to that little bit. So, I started a blog called A Brown Table. The blog was called A Brown Table. The name came up because, actually I'm really bad at coming up with names. So, I said well one of the things that right now is really a predominant focus in food styling is wooden, like these wooden tables, and I had taken two planks from my husband's parents farm, from the barn, and I said that's going to be the brown table. So that's how the first, the brown part of that. The second thing was I was also going to allude to the fact that my skin was brown because I thought it was funny. So, I'm just going to be cheeky and call it A Brown Table for and now I'm sure I said, I'm sure no one's going to get that but it's funny for me.

So, my husband's white, just in case you're wondering. [Richard and audience laugh] So, he said okay, he's always uncomfortable about these things. So, we start you know, A Brown Table was bonded with two wooden planks on a trashcan. We were living in our condo in D.C., but it was a basement condo, and I would come back from school at night because I was still in public policy at that time. And then I would photograph, cook and photograph at night. What happened was, basement condo, East Coast, D.C. Most of I feel, the East Coast especially in the upper North part is predominantly, there's no sunlight, right? It's cold for the most part of the year and I had to learn how to photograph with artificial light before I started to use natural. So, a lot of the photos initially were shot that way, and started to do that, and I was having fun. I was writing about things that I wanted to talk about. But share a perspective on India in America at the same time the way I saw it, not the way people were being shown, or what was being represented like I didn't grow up eating naan, so I had to learn how to make naan.

I wrote about how I learned to make naan. I wrote about how I learned how to make naan and curries. I don't talk about curries. I didn't do that in the book on purpose because I feel there's so much more to the country that I grew up in. So, I kind of wanted to share that perspective but also come across from an immigrant's perspective what it was for me to discover things here, make it my own, and share that with people. Because that's what I was doing with my friends when they would come to visit. I was cooking things the way I wanted to, and started to do that. I was also exploring things that I really liked to eat that were outside Indian culture like Greek food, because I had learned, I had tasted spanakopita for the first time. I thought that was so delicious. And so, I would actually cook one of the things that I love to do was to cook an entire Greek meal for my friend who was actually Greek and so it was like, you know, a lot of these like for me it was so much fun because I was exploring and writing about it. At the time, my husband was working. He's from the military and then had moved to Palestine, and then moved away, and he wanted to break from defense and he got a job out here in California. So, he said we're going to move. So we got, we got married by then. We moved to California and we were living in South Bay in Santa Clara right on the border of Santa Clara/Sunnyvale.

Because he had made a career change, I told him hey, I kind of want to make a career change too. I want to go to culinary school. Neither of us knew anything, and I didn't have a romantic idea about it, but I did know that it I knew that it it's a very perceived as a glamorous feel because the TV shows that started to come out by then, you know Top Chef and all those things. But at the same time, I also knew it was a high-risk career from what my mom had told me early on, and then from the friends that I had started to make in the field. So, I knew it was kind of a dicey thing to be in. But I was really enjoying the experience of the food blog, and things were taking off for me. People were kind of enjoying whatever I was writing and so it kind of feed it feeds you, right? So, you're getting excited and I was fed up with science. I was just wanted to get away from it.

So initially, I was working at a pharmaceutical place in the South Bay for a couple of months when we moved. And then I told him I said, hey I want to go to school so let me apply, so I applied did the interviews, we didn't qualify. So, my husband had left over military benefits, but at the time you left they would not transfer them to the spouse or kids, if we had any, just because of the time that he left. The law had was it was one of those retroactive laws which would take effect if he had left after certain point, but not when he left. So, we couldn't use those loans and I didn't want to take a loan having never had a school loan and going to something that is so high risk, it didn't make any sense. It scared me. I didn't want that.

So, I said maybe I shouldn't go to culinary school. I'm going to go out and see if I can work in a kitchen and see if I actually like it before trying to make this big major life change, and he was okay with that too kind of like my parents where he was supportive but much more supportive than they were but also a little nervous that he wants to make this big jump. Which in reality sounds crazy, and I was, I decided you know, I really wanted to do pastry because I have a sweet tooth. I wanted to do pastry and it's also more scientific. It's there's a lot of precision, and I enjoyed that. So, I called up 12 to 15 pastry places that were where we lived. One lady called me back and she said you called up my other store—and I didn't know that they were connected at this at that time—and she said you called up at both stores. You sound really serious. I'm really serious. Why don’t you come in and stage, and we'll see how it goes?

And I met up with them, told her like my background, I was working this pharmaceutical company and she said, you know, I'm just going to pay you eight or nine dollars an hour nothing more. And so, make sure you want to leave your high paying job to do this and I said it's risky, but it sounds exciting, I really want to do this and if I don't do it now, I will go through life regretting not doing it. So that would be a bigger thing at least try it, fail, and then move on. So, I staged. What I would do, their hours are early in a patisserie, so usually start about 4:00/4:30, and then you are done by noon depending on your shift, mine was the early morning shift. So, I lied at the pharmaceutical place. I told him I have a family emergency for two weeks. So, I would bike in the morning to the pastry shop, you know, change, I staged for two weeks, and then I would go home in the afternoon, take a shower because I was so scared of the smell of cocoa and vanilla, [Richard and audience laugh] that they would feel that something shady was going on, and bike back to the pharmaceutical place, get my experiments done, and then come home.

But it was the thought of going to the pastry shop that excited me the most, and I wasn't sure at that time whether it was just the newness of it, or was I really interested in it. And I said, the only way to find out is if she lets me stay on, and she did. She made the offer, and she said are you really sure after two weeks? She said your work’s good, you know, you've got the ethic, you're excited. So, I'm going to offer it to you, but it's eight an hour, nine dollars. I don't remember. So, I said I spoke, went home, spoke to my husband. He said it's fine. I'll support you through this and that's a very important thing. It's you know to have someone who supports you financially. Also, I was fortunate to have that and I started to do it. My parents were freaking out because they thought a blog was okay, he's just like, it's a hobby. He's doing it for fun. And you know, let's just entertain that. And when I decided, I didn't tell them I was doing all this, when I finally told him that I had quit, they freaked out. It was I think harder for them to deal with that, than me coming out and there were all these things where my mom my mom and dad would tell me like what if you get divorced tomorrow, you can't survive on being a cook. So, I said, we're not even like going down this route of of the what-ifs. Let's just focus on what's happening right now, so I didn't tell them much it just pursued, and I really enjoyed it.

At the same time, I also started to freelance quite a bit in photography and writing because I had also trained. I was self-taught in cooking as well as in photographs and I had started with in D.C. I bought a Nikon Coolpix point-and-shoot camera and I started with that once I got comfortable with that I went and got a Nikon DX, which is one of those it has a smaller frame. Started with that, got comfortable with that, and then moved on to the full frame, and then I got more comfortable with that. And so, I taught myself to do these things by looking at old books, old photography books, and through cookbooks. So, I'm working at this place, one of the things I noticed while working there was, and this is something I had never paid attention to even when I ate at restaurants across the country. The people that were working in the kitchen, and at this place we had, the owner was Persian. I was Indian, obviously there was a Vietnamese lady working, there were two Vietnamese ladies working that there, there were two Mexicans. There was a kid who was Japanese. There were all these people from all over. But the person that ran the front, even though the owner was Persian, the person that ran the front was a white kid. And every restaurant that I had been too had the same thing. We would I would go out with my husband and I couldn't understand why it was such a rare thing. And I actually I will say that in California. It's very different. You do see a lot of people from all over because this is the state with the largest immigrant population. So, you do it breaks the rules in many ways. But like in D.C. on the East Coast, I never saw that. And I didn't understand why I didn't pay attention to it. But when I started work at the patisserie, that's when I started to pay attention, like it didn't make sense to me.

As I was learning to photograph, I was also looking at food magazines, at media, at Pinterest, which had come out at that point, and everything that I saw there were there was no representation of people who were not white or that had a really light skin being shown in mainstream food media. And I was looking to those photos, to those places for inspiration, and it really surprised me because just thinking logically about it from a marketing standpoint. You want everybody to buy a product, right? You want to see your product and you want your consumer to feel comfortable holding that in their hands. They should be able to feel that. Why is that not happening in this country? And it made me feel a little uncomfortable. So, I thought… A - I knew what I really like to do at this point. I'd become comfortable and a better photographer than I was before. So, I wanted to do instructional food photos. So, I said if I incorporate myself, it's I'm also being in my own way kind of being a voice, a silent voice for people who I had worked with. And pay homage to them.

So, I started to do that in my photos, showcase my hands, rarely, originally, I would not show my face too much because they just wanted people to feel that anybody could be in that position in the kitchen, doing something be it the simplest thing like, you know cutting something or squeezing a lime. And so, I started to do that. What was really interesting, and this was unexpected. I had come from a medium, or rather a career where you're used to being criticized on your academics or your research ideas and you’re taught, at least in medicine, that and I think I think this is in any degree program, that your professors are taught or rather will train you to be taken down. But from the quality of your work, but not for who you are. When I started to photograph myself, I started to get these anonymous comments about the color of my skin. You know being too dark, too ashy, like burnt hockey pads. And having not also seen brown people in media, I kind of felt that maybe they're right and I don't have a space to represent myself on my work the way I want to, and maybe they're right because that's not something that sells. So, I was very uncomfortable and actually took a step back because I was getting a lot of these anonymous comments originally, and I was not used to being trolled, and I decided that I was going to go back and maybe leave.

And so, I took a break for a while, and then I started to think about it in a much more logical fashion because this is like a thing of like how scientists are trained…where…should I give someone the opportunity to take away something from me that I had really started to love a lot? And I said no. Because I had already taken a really large risk in leaving something that was potentially really stable in science. To doing something that is not. And I'm having fun at it more than I ever did in science. Should I give them more power? But it took a couple of weeks to kind of, actually a couple of, I want to say like was like two months of me just going back and forth with myself, whether I really want to do this or not. To put myself out there and be vulnerable. And I decided to stay on with it so I could continue to work at the place. And then kind of just pushed, pushed through it.

And then as my work started getting recognized, you know, those comments kind of started to subside. I'd had won an award by then, and then I got another award, and I think what awards do for, you know people who are not represented in media is that they give it gives like this stamp that it's, you matter, you're okay. And you know people then kind of well is someone, and this is a very sad thing to say, but if someone of like a position of privilege or power is accepting that, then it's okay for everyone else too. And that's what it is.

So, you know, I continued and then luckily along the way I met a lot of people who are really supportive and really interested in my work, for the quality of the work. And I started to work as a food photographer at that point. We bought a house in Oakland, so I moved to Oakland, and I have to leave my job at the pastry place and worked as a food photographer in San Francisco for a year. And at that time, I started to do more freelance work. I kind of wanted to do more and more freelance food writing. So, I started to write for magazines and then at that point, the San Francisco Chronicle approached me to write a column for them. So that's how my column came about, and then at the same time I signed the book deal, which is where Season came. Yeah.

[Richard and audience laughing]

Richard: I just have to say you are an interviewer’s dream!

Nik: Just taking! I do talk a lot, I know.

[All laughing]

Richard: I’m just spellbound. I was so interested. I forgot what I was going to ask you, but it doesn't matter. [Nik laughs] This is such a, this is such a beautiful book, and what you just said around photographing your hands. I was saying to, over dinner, was just saying that it's not that often that you see a photograph in a cookbook of the chef’s hands, but all through the book you're doing all kinds of things. I mean you are so inviting, and passionate, and creative, and inclusive like just holding a…picture is that uh…that's just a, just I think it's just [Nik: I’ve seen this book way too many times] you beautiful hands all through all through the thing, and it's not easy to take pictures of food. I mean, I've been at dinner with a friends…

Nik: It’s definitely a different skill like, yeah…

Richard: I have been at dinner with friends who are trying to take a picture for Facebook or something and it's like

[Audience laughing]

Nik: I can’t do this, yeah…

Richard: But you've really developed it in this incredible way, like just a drop of oil onto the margherita pizza or whatever it is.

Nik: Sure. I think one of the things I really, I had left science to be in food because I really love cooking more actually than the final product. Sure. Everybody loves the, you know, the hero, we call it the hero shot. I love the hero shot. But I think one of the things that I felt was missing was the process. I had left this career to cook and I felt that it really wasn't paid much attention to, so I started to do that. That was my point of view visually to focus on the process of cooking and celebrate that because I felt it, it really wasn't being done. At least from what I had seen.

Richard: And so now the book is out, and you’re traveling the world talking about it and signing copies, and….

Nik: Yeah, it's been it's been fun to see how receptive everyone's been to the book. And yeah.

Richard: And one of the things I was asking about earlier, what's next? Are we going to get to see you on a cooking show or a Netflix series? Because you have a, you're a natural.

Nik: Well, I did sign, I'm working on another book. Nothing has been written yet, there’s no date, but I have signed a deal to work on a new book.

Richard: Can you give us a preview of what the next book will be?

Nik: I don't even know - I just signed the thing! [Richard and audience laugh] I met with my editor today to discuss kind of the direction, but it will be a follow-up in general. It will kind of lead off to this. I'm really passionate about pursuing flavor. So, I want to talk more about that, from where this was more of an introductory book about my life, or where I'm coming from, why I think the way I think, why I cook the way I cook. And so, the next book will kind of expand on that hopefully in a much more fun way than this one. I mean this was fun, but you kind of want everything to be more fun than the previous one.

Richard: Yeah, I can tell that you really enjoy the fun in the kitchen and the experimentation [Nik: Yeah!] and and the fact that you almost welcome people to modify these recipes, and make them their own, [Nik: Mhm] and make mistakes, and not be afraid, and I think that's the thing that's the most most special about the book is you actually talk, you write the way you talk which is - you can do this!

Nik: Yeah. I mean I want people to…I think one of the things that I learned living in India is you're told you can fail, and your parents will remind you all the time that you can fail. I came here and everyone is taught to succeed, you never fail. And so, I've noticed that as I've written recipes over the years, as I've interacted with people, that everyone wants thing, they want things to succeed the first time. The most important thing to remember, and this is something I learned cooking because I had to learn by myself. I never remember the things I've succeeded at, the only things I remember are the things that I fail at. And that's what makes me a better cook, or a better photographer, a better writer is because I know then I need to fix that. How do I fix that? It makes me think logically and I think that's a skill people need to really celebrate, is to learn how to fail. We don't celebrate failures as much as we do successes.

Richard: But can you always eat the failures?

[Audience laughing]

Nik: Not necessarily, [Richard laughs] but I think again, that's I think for me that's…I mean sure…like there are you know like financial considerations to think about, time, but there are things that you could do simply like fry an egg. Right, and you it's but it's good to know how to fry an egg properly, right?

Richard: Which is how?

Nik: Like if you are so used to using a nonstick skillet, like my mom is, she will never venture into cast iron or stainless steel. I've learned to use stainless steel and I don't use nonstick in my house. So, she panics when she comes over for the one thing that she cooks for herself. [Richard laughs] But it's kind of like those things, like you need to learn how to be adaptable, it teaches you these things and not only does it manifest in food. It starts to manifest in your life for me. I was an introvert. I was not very confident, but it was making these mistakes, and learning how to fix them that made me much more confident, becoming a confident cook made me a confident person in other parts of my life and these skills start to manifest themselves. And I think it's so important for people to try these little things that’ll make something so simple, right? It’s not something that has to be like an elaborate project. You become better then at that project at work just because of these skills that you gain here.

Richard: Well, we have just a few more minutes before we're going to go to some questions from all of you. It's interesting because you, you say, “mine is the story of a gay immigrant told through food” and then you go on to say that “my food has always been about wanting people to accept me. But I'm also looking for acceptance from myself.”

Nik: Yeah, I think one of the things that I mean, it's true I'm gay and I'm an immigrant, but one of the things is that we're always looking for is acceptance. It's not only me just because I'm gay and an immigrant, but I would obviously want people to accept me for what I am creating - the food I'm cooking, for my culture that I grew up with, and also the country that is now my home. Obviously, I used my food to kind of connect my past, present, and future. But at the same time, And I'm sure everyone else goes through this too, whether you're an immigrant or you're gay or not.

You are ultimately looking for acceptance from people, because you want people to see who you really are, right? And at the same time for me, I'm also looking to accept myself because I want to feel like I am doing things the right way. I'm you know contributing to society usefully, but I'm also getting to share a story with people that comes from me. And I'm comfortable in sharing that. I'm also, you know, I always say even when coming out, acceptance wasn't something that happened overnight. It's a process that takes a while.

And so, you know, those were I think that's kind of what I want people to get from the book is that it's okay to be different. It's okay to share stories, and it's okay to be vulnerable because for me one of the things I did with this book since this is the first book. I kind of wanted to introduce myself to people, but I'm also thinking back to the child that I was, that I had no one to look up to that was like me. And so hopefully, you know, the kid that's questioning their existence or their life or whatever, you know, they're going through, or you know, some kind of personal issues. That they feel that there are people out there like them that have had, you know a good journey. You don't want them to feel alone. I mean, that's that's my take from it.

Richard: Well, thank you so much, and thank you for the book. It's, I think we're very fortunate you didn't end up in medicine. Not that you wouldn’t have been a fine doctor, but the fact…

Nik: Probably not…

[Audience laughing]

Richard: You’ve created this and given the world this. This is such an incredible gift and [Nik: Thank you] and I look forward to, my partner does most of the cooking. I'm really the cleanup guy. [Nik: Okay] But I started looking at this. I thought you know, I want to make this butterscotch, squash, and tea soup…and I started looking at the ingredients I said, I can find these things, that's nuts. They're not so exotic. [Nik: laughs] And you even tell me where the spice shops are here in the San Francisco where to find the things.

Nik: Yeah. I definitely wanted to do that. So people kind of have locations in the north, south, east, west at least in the major parts of the country.

Richard: And the other thing that’s really helpful is that you actually took photographs of the ingredients like all [Nik: Yeah] all the different chilies and things, you I have a whole page of them…

Nik: I think we learn better through photos more than anything these days, or videos. So, I really wanted a visual comparison for people to say hey I can go to the store. Maybe like just look at the photo, you don't have to ask for help, because I used to get embarrassed asking for help sometimes at the store, but this kind of makes it easy. If you know what it looks like. You can go to the store quietly pick it off from the shelf and not have to ask someone for help, because often people who work at stores also don't know what they're selling.

[Audience laughing]

Richard: [laughing] Well, thank you.

Nik: Thank you.

[Theme Music]

Thank you for listening to the CIIS Public Programs Podcast. Our talks and conversations are presented live in San Francisco, California. We recognize that our university’s building in San Francisco occupies traditional, unceded Ramaytush Ohlone lands. If you are interested in learning more about native lands, languages, and territories, the website native-land.ca is a helpful resource for you to learn about and acknowledge the Indigenous land where you live.

Podcast production is supervised by Kirstin Van Cleef at CIIS Public Programs. Audio production is supervised by Lyle Barrere at Desired Effect. The CIIS Public Programs team includes Kyle DeMedio, Alex Elliott, Emlyn Guiney, Jason McArthur, and Patty Pforte. If you liked what you heard, please subscribe wherever you find podcasts, visit our website ciis.edu, and connect with us on social media @ciispubprograms.

CIIS Public Programs commits to using our in-person and online platforms to uplift the stories and teachings of Black, Indigenous, and other people of color; those in the LGBTQIA+ community; and all those whose lives emerge from the intersections of multiple identities.

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