Kavita Chhibber in conversation with Master Chef Vikas Khanna
Kavita’s note: I have been wanting to start this column forever. The idea and the title “Extraordinary Measures” came when I once said to my husband Ajit, “We are all ordinary people. But we are made extraordinary by that ‘extra’ measure of love by someone else, the courage or bravery we show when all seems dark. And he said, “Why don’t you feature such people and call the column ‘Extraordinary Measures”?
I am so proud and happy that this column decided to choose one of the most extraordinary people I know, to take birth with. And it could not have happened at a better time.
Whenever either one of us is down, Master Chef Vikas Khanna and I always call each other. And very soon, our whines and complaints turn into laughter. We get each other’s humor and we believe that optimism and joy, laughter and Punjabi jokes must be the spices that flavor our daily lives. There is no pretense of hidden agendas. Both of us can say whatever we want knowing it will stay there.
Some of the best advice or life lessons have come to me from Vikas. And what continues to inspire me is the fact that he takes his success very lightly and he constantly reinvents himself. I never get tired of hearing stories about his mother, Bindu Khanna, who not only keeps him grounded but who he calls his “moral compass”.
In a free-wheeling interview Vikas talks about his initiative of feeding the downtrodden in India – the challenges, cherished moments and… contrary to what I think… he isn’t always nice! There is also plenty of spice!
When did you know that Corona Virus was much bigger than what was being said in the USA?
I had come to Boston for a conference on 29th February and you and I spent time together. I met a physician there who specialized in infectious diseases and he told me that there would be a big flare up by March end.
I was supposed to sign a lease for my new restaurant on April 1st but was told to wait because there was news that was not good. That the virus from Wuhan was spreading everywhere. We waited for two days and then life took such a strange turn. Initially we did not understand that it was going to be something that big, but then the lockdown started, and people started saying that something like this had not happened in present history.
When the lockdown started, I had already started a small initiative. I thought intuitively that we needed to help orphanages, old age homes and leprosy centers. Emails started pouring in shortly about the enormity of the epidemic, and I became concerned. It seemed that some major catastrophe was about to happen. Being partly from a farming family I knew that the harvest season was going to be interrupted and that will really affect the farmers as well.
I live on the east side of Manhattan and Bellevue (Hospital) is close by. All I would see and hear were sirens of ambulances.
As a young chef I was not that close to people, but when I was running “Junoon”, one of the most popular restaurants in New York, I would meet almost 400 to 500 people daily. They would come and meet me, and compliment me on the food. Relationships started forming and all these people became a part of a loving, extended family.
Suddenly many of them started falling sick and dying. My aunt who was my first guardian in New York and her husband both caught the corona virus. She was asthmatic and did not survive.
When you are not involved personally, people are just statistics. You hear the statistics, feel sorry and go back to your dinner.
But when it is people you love, and they are dying every day, the statistics become people… and then you cannot eat and you can’t sleep. You remember I called you that day when several people I knew were either on a ventilator or dying, all in the same day? I said, “Kavita, I cannot deal with so much loss every single day and I need to hear your voice.” Suddenly I realized this was a war where there was no ceasefire in sight and no peace treaty that would be signed. You see the enemy, but you do not know who will be attacked, who will live and who will not.
Yes I do remember how upset you were, and yet you were already helping some people in Europe to survive, to find a place to stay, all while struggling with the sadness of loss. But then, just as I always see you do, you tried to do more stuff that was positive and helpful. Your attention shifted to India. You were in the hot epicenter, New York, quarantined under strict orders from your team, because so much was invested in you as a celebrity. But you had already started tweeting and asking that people needing help try to contact you. You had started trying to organize rations, even paying for them yourself.
The first challenge was the time difference. I had to train my body to be awake all night while deliveries were being done in India. And all the information was being carried on email, so I had to stay up all night checking email.
I never thought I could pull it off because my very first delivery failed. I was trying to connect with people who could deliver food on my behalf and there was a delivery near Bengaluru that was to be made. This man who agreed to do it for me seemed so nice. He said, “Oh we love you! My entire family watches you and are your fans.” As soon as he received the rations (worth over 60,000 rupees) he vanished with the truck. And that was not all. Things became tough to execute sitting here in my apartment in New York, trying to send deliveries in India to the right places. It was like running 100 Michelin star community kitchens. On top of that: One mistake and people start abusing you.
So proud of our teams. We are now 57 FuelStations to FoodStations strong. 
Thank you everyone for your support. 
Thousands of cooked meals served everyday through them in UP/MH. #FeedIndia
When they wanted something, you would get 200 emails and when they received the rations no one would have the courtesy to even write one email to acknowledge that they had received everything. We were trying to create an efficient system but there were so many roadblocks.
I was so disheartened. I called my mom. We talk everyday and have to send a screenshot of how many steps we have done. I think now she has become my daughter. I have to see the screen shot and call her and clap and say Wow! And cheer her on. Which I did.
And then I started whining that this was very hard. Someone took off with the truckload of grains and blocked me on WhatsApp and I could not handle it. I was supposed to send that ration to an old age home, and he knew. I even posted #Karma in a tweet. I was so upset.
Mom listened to my whining but was most nonchalant. “So? You probably owed him from a previous lifetime. In any case that food will not go waste. It will go into the stomach of someone. Just not the people you wanted.”
“Now go and try again. My country needs you. Go feed people who need you. You are who you are because of their love.” And the funniest thing was when I finally did get the food to the old age home, one of the sweet old ladies talked to me on the phone and said, “Tell Master Chef Sanjeev Kapoor I am his fan! You, Vikas Khanna, you hardly talk and when you do I cannot understand if you are talking in Hindi or Punjabi. I cannot understand you at all.” I laughed so much at how cute and honest the old lady was.
So precious yes, but then there were times people thought you had ulterior motives.
That sent me back to mom again. And she said “I have not kept you in my womb, given birth to you, raised you for almost 50 years through tough times so that you spend your time just taking selfies with people. When boys go to join the armed forces, their mothers train them and remind them to go and protect their country, even if it meant sacrificing their lives.”
“My country needs you. Go and help those who need help. Don’t worry about those who do not know you and criticize.”
It reminded me of those days when I had just started my little restaurant and my mother would be constantly disrespected by customers. Women were not treated well in the hospitality industry. Someone would criticize the food and ask for a discount. Someone would abuse her and ask her to get another glass or to remove the bones from the plate. And she would keep running, keep giving discounts. And I would watch and cry. If the food was not up to par (and she knew we had our limitations) because of my mistakes my mother would bear the brunt. My dad would joke, “You guys just open a charity, you don’t make a single rupee.”
One day, I told her tearfully that I wanted to close the place down. That I could not bear to see her being insulted deliberately and daily by customers. Mom replied, “So what? They are strangers. I don’t know them. It’s their problem. Why should what they say, bother me?” And then she said, “This is your training to face real life.” I could never forget that line and now that I am talking to you, I realize the truth in it.
She keeps it simple and uncomplicated, doesn’t she? No ego. All focus!
Yes, she is very practical and focuses on what matters. But she reminded me of that time and said, “That was your training. All these years every time you want to give up, remember the training. Now go and help my country. It needs you.” She is my moral compass. Always. But it has still been a strange experience to realize that people can still be dishonest and unethical even in times of dire need. We would be told, “Just deliver the food to this area and we will distribute it.” We would gratefully do that and then those people would vanish. If we asked for proof, we got the reply, “It is not in our culture to brag about service or charity through pictures.”
At that time, we were trying to help orphanages, old age homes, leprosy centers in remote areas where help had not reached. I was putting in my own money and people were taking advantage thinking just because I am well known, I must have unlimited wealth. Now we have so many partners and organizations helping us to streamline the procedure but initially there were so many roadblocks. Someone said do not use the word “leprosy” because it has a stigma attached to it. People won’t help you. I said well, then I am definitely going to use the word. You cannot discriminate against people and make them feel unwanted and isolated like this.
Another time we would get calls, that there were migrant workers here in U.P. (Uttar Pradesh) working in a brick kiln. “Send us the rations. We will distribute them. Just drop them off.” And then they would abscond with the stuff. I realized soon enough there has to be transparency and a fool proof system. It was after NDRF (National Disaster Response Force) came on board that things started changing and now we have so many partners helping out. But there are still challenges where sometimes rations won’t be delivered on time, or there is nothing available.
Distribution of dry ration, fruit juice, toothpaste and slippers. 
City Park, Govindpuram and Indergarhi areas of Ghaziabad. 
Our heroes of @NDRFHQ
working round the clock to protect, nourish and feed India.
So 8 million meals provided in just a couple of months, you made Eid very special this year, serving 200,000 people. Why does it mean so much?
In 1992, a Muslim family saved my life. I never get tired of telling that story.
I was training at Sea Rock Sheraton and was a kitchen and room service trainee, which was part of my graduation. Riots had broken out, and Bombay was burning. My brother was staying in a flat in Ghatkopar and I was stuck in the hotel. We could not leave and people doing the next shift were not able to come. So those of us who were there would sleep somewhere for 3 to 4 hours, and then were woken up to run and deliver room service as the hotel was full. I was really worried about my brother and I told the General Manager I had to leave.
The management wasn’t too pleased and even threatened not to give me my certificate. But I left. But then the riots caught up with us near Khar.
The memory of that day is still a dark space that never leaves me. I black out even today and just see flashes of mobs running, mobs yelling, coming towards me angrily and asking each other to cut the people to pieces. Everything was a blur. A mob approached me menacingly and asked “Tu Kaon Hai?” (Who are you?”) A Muslim man stepped in and told the mob I was his son and worked in a hotel.
I do not know why he took pity on me and that dark space has never left my life. I had experienced riots in 1984, but I have never experienced anything like 1992. I remember going through a maze of narrow bylanes into a lower middle class community where this man told the lady who I now call Ammi, “This boy will stay with us.” I kept saying, “No I need to go to Ghatkopkar.” And he said, “No things are very bad right now. My son-in-law will go check on your brother and will take you there later when it is safe.”
The lady of the house took such good care of me. She gave me clothes to wear. They had probably thought it would be a matter of a few hours, but I stayed in their house for 3 plus days. I was deeply depressed and would sleep for hours due to that depression. But Ammi, who I really consider my second mother, was so kind to me.
Ammi asked me once “What do you do?” I told her “I am a trainee in a hotel right now but, some day I will be the biggest chef in India.”
She probably laughed at me silently, because it was hardly considered a respectable career in those days, so my grand announcement probably didn’t matter to her. I was finally escorted in an auto rickshaw by her son- in-law to my brother’s apartment. I still remember the fragrance of detergent used on my pant and shirt that she had washed and given to me so I could return the white shirt and black pant that was theirs.
When I told my father how a Muslim family saved my life, he told me the story of how during partition my Biji (paternal grandmother) had saved many lives of young Muslim girls. She gave them refuge and fed them, while their parents went to Pakistan to find a home and eventually bring them back. Papa said, “This is Karma. Biji saved the lives of so many Muslim girls and fed them and it returned to us by a Muslim family saving your life and Ammi feeding you and taking care of you.” When you hear about karma in a philosophical way, it is a different thing. When you experience it personally, you realize that it really does exist.
I shared this story on actor Anupam Kher’s show a couple of years ago and told him that since that day I always kept one roza (fast) in Ammi’s honor.
Suddenly all kinds of people started claiming they were the ones who took care of me. You share a vulnerable moment in the media and suddenly you will see all these people trying to exploit you.
But then there was a story that rang a bell. Someone talked of a lady who lived behind a mosque in a community and she always talked about this young boy who they had saved – one who said he would be India’s biggest chef one day. She also mentioned that when I finally left their home, I didn’t utter a word, not even a thank you, but that I kept looking back as I was walking away.
So I went to see her without any fanfare. Quietly. Because fame sometimes has a way of destroying families. She told me it was good I came incognito, because people would have taunted her for keeping a young boy in her house when she had a young daughter of marriageable age.
I am still in touch with her and she knows how much I love her, but I keep her identity secret. And I still keep one roza in her honor every Ramzan.
So it was a very special moment for me to be able to provide those 200,000 meals on Eid.
You have another big initiative coming up as we speak.
Yes, one big event to feed one million people from the transgender community, people infected with HIV/AIDS and sex workers. We will do this in a big football stadium in Ghaziabad Cantonment. There will be rations for 200 meals in each one of those 10,000 bags. Now I know the ingredients by heart. 25-30 kilograms rice, flour, sugar, salt, oil, lentils, soya chunks, garlic, oil, soap, detergents, sanitary pads and sanitizers. It will be blessed by Laxmi Narayan Tripathi (the renowned transgender rights activist). And the best thing is that we are buying directly from the farmers and paying them directly. It means a lot to me personally.
It has been totally crazy. I had tried to micromanage everything. Even to the point that I knew it would take 1 minute 42 seconds to pack one bag with 200 meals. We had 140 people, sewing machines to seal those bags and chefs who had volunteered to help. You see the nutri nuggets for example, came from Baba Ramdev. I can look at the quantity and guess correctly the weight etc. And so can other experienced chefs. But even they were baffled. They said they had never seen this large quantity of food before them.
So we had to postpone the event to 10th June.
I want to mention something here. It was you, Kavita who first wrote about the transgender community way back in 2002, when everyone dumped them on the sidelines. You gave them the dignity they deserved, you gave them a voice, you didn’t mince words and yet you did not present them as martyrs.
Yes it was among the top five finalists for the GLAAD Media Awards and put the publication Little India on a global map.
And I became so much more aware of the marginalization of Transgenders from society after reading that story. My book “Utsav” is dedicated to them.
For me this is project “Barkat”, that Barkat which comes with Laxmi Tripathi’s blessings.
It is hard to translate Barkat in English. It’s more than just abundance.
These have been the most challenging and the most gratifying two months of my life. Every day was a struggle seeing failure, or some mistake, and then suddenly the support would come and victory too became within grasp.
Where do you get this drive to keep on making a difference? I never see you getting hassled. You don’t travel with security guards or throw an attitude. How are you so nice?
I am not. Main bahut ladaaka hoon. (I am very demanding.) I get very upset if people are not delivering in the kitchen. I have made people actually cry. The first time I will tell them nicely that I did not like their attitude or whatever they were doing wrong with the food. If they repeat it, I will warn them. But if it happens a third time, I go ballistic. People have to beg, “Chef, please calm down, sir, please calm down.” But for me it is inexcusable that you would not give your best to your customer.
I have known you for over a decade. People around you have changed. You are a global icon and you still remains the same. What does success really mean to you?
A roller coaster. So it keeps me grounded. With every up there has been a down and vice versa. I have never seen myself as a global icon or super successful. I still stress about that one potato that didn’t boil properly or didn’t get sliced properly and beat myself up for it. For me it’s like when someone works hard to earn an income and then he decides to use some of it to buy food from my restaurant. That is because he believes in my skills and who knows when the divine will walk through my door in the clothes of a diner. If he gets a dish he doesn’t like, then I am letting down three generations of people who worked hard so I could rise on their shoulders.
I keep trying to reinvent myself. I have written books and then I produced, wrote and directed “The Last Color.” People said, “What’s wrong with you? You are this 5-time Michelin starred Master Chef. What are you doing making films? And opening yourself to scrutiny and criticism?” But when “The Last Color” came out, it just made waves everywhere.
People saw a different man. A man whose appreciation of scars and wounded souls might just be his own story. It was a side of me they would have never seen in my restaurants.
And then of course I have my family. They don’t care if I was making dinner for the Obamas one night or stressing about my new restaurant in the morning.
My mother could not care less. I have always believed that my mother’s blessings bring luck to any new restaurant I open. It’s only after she lights the gas that the first dish is cooked… and I have to beg and plead with her to come every time.
It happened for both “Junoon”, my well-known restaurant in New York and the recently opened “Kinara” in Dubai.
She refused. As did my Bua (Dad’s sister) to come on the designated dates. I am begging and pleading and then telling the investors my mom and aunt are a bit busy and can we have a date change?
They asked “Oh what do they do?” And I said, “Oh, Nothing!”
“And why aren’t they ready to come?”
“Well, because they are ‘busy’ with their kitty parties and the wedding season has started so they don’t want to miss out on the weddings.”
These two ladies finally reluctantly showed up in Dubai. The place is full of peacocks. I personally serve them breakfast at 7 am and tell them the inauguration is at 10 am but they are busy getting excited over peacocks dancing around them. My aunt exclaims, “Oh Lord Krishna is here with us!”
Then they show up casually at 1 pm. I said, “Can’t you ladies have some discipline? You are showing up 3 hours late.” They retort huffily, “Hamein toh aana hi nahin chahiye tha, apni beizzati karane aa gaye!” (We shouldn’t have come. We just ended up being disrespected!) And I had to apologize all over again!
But that is how it has always been. I am the same, maybe people around me change. I have never worn my success as a crown. My grandmother always said a crown is a heavy, back-breaking liability.
The hospitality industry has been hit hard. I see a lot of depression among chefs.
It worries me. But I do believe that we have to keep hope alive. We will overcome this like we have overcome every adversity. It is not going to be easy. We do some big events in the summer and those events pay so many expenses for us. But we do not know now what summer will be like. Still, we do not have a choice but to rise above this. We have to find some motivation, some joy within us.
And finally, when is “The Last Color” going to be accessible to a global audience?
You have been with me on the journey, seeing bits and pieces when I was making it. You were among the first to see the film. So it gives me great happiness to share here that the film will be available soon on a digital platform and I hope it will touch the hearts of all those who have been waiting for it.
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