Food is about so much. Fuel. Home. Family. Celebration. Sustenance. Sometimes food is only about necessity: feeding a body and giving it energy. But we all know that at times food is about so much more: flavours that make you want to weep; occasions and dishes that live in the memory for years; recipes handed down through generations. One element that adds to the pleasure and pertinence of food is a sense of story.
I’m one of those people who thinks about food A LOT (it’s a family trait). But I also skip lunch on most weekdays: it just doesn’t fit into my schedule.
With quite a few deadlines of one sort or another of late, I’ve been working lots of hours, and so one day last week, thinking I needed a break, I took a long lunch to treat myself.
Darjeeling Express was my destination, in its new iteration in London’s Covent Garden. Due to the England-wide lockdown, the new venue hasn’t opened yet, but they had started selling take-away from the deli side of the business.
While I waited for my aloo paratha and mutton kati roll, I sat in the adjoining courtyard and drank the most incredible masala chai; I don’t have the vocabulary to explain the taste and complexity without sounding ridiculously pretentious, so I won’t try. But I will be stopping for a cup whenever I am in Covent Garden in the future!
Asma Khan is the woman behind Darjeeling Express; I became aware of her existence through the Netflix docuseries Chef’s Table. So many things about her story grabbed my attention. And it is her story that adds much to the appeal of her food. Pascal Gerard-Barker in the Netflix programme:
“When you go to Darjeeling Express Asma will tell you the history of every dish and how it relates to perhaps her family or the historical side of India, but also the emotional connection that she and the people who cook in her kitchen have with the food that she makes.”
I’m a third daughter: my parents were blessed with a team of only girls. I haven’t reflected on this fact a great deal; I haven’t needed to. As far as I remember, I was wanted, welcomed, celebrated.
Asma Khan on the other hand….
“In India when a girl is born there’s no celebration and no fireworks. It’s that moment of darkness in a family. And when you’re unlucky enough to have another girl, it is not like a life, but almost like a death. My mother cried at my birth... I was born a second daughter.”
Part of the story behind this remarkable woman is this set of circumstances, as she explains in the Netflix episode. Despite education and wealth, this was still the cultural backdrop to Asma Khan’s family. Perhaps it seems naïve to find this shocking; it’s not as if I'm unaware of the disadvantages girls endure across cultures, including our own. But I found it heart-breaking. The enduring knowledge that her very sex was a cause for grief; for disappointment; a cause to push and prove herself; has made Asma Khan what she is today.
Speaking of her mother, she says:
“I want to erase that moment when they told her it was a girl. I can’t wipe those tears but what I can do is bring pride into my mother’s eyes, become this amazing thing, leave a mark, a mark so deep that no one cares that I was a second daughter.”
To make that mark, Khan has opened a restaurant which has received huge acclaim; and it is a restaurant like no other.
“In a departure from convention and perceived wisdom, her team is made up solely of women who have only ever cooked at home. It’s a club of housewives and nannies, none of whom have had any professional training or experience.”[1]
We all know, as does Asma, the irony that every Indian home kitchen is controlled by women, and almost every Indian restaurant kitchen is dominated by men. (I suspect this is true of many, even most? countries and cuisines.)
Before she opened her restaurant, Khan was a trained lawyer with several degrees, including a PhD in British constitutional law from Oxford. Even now she says “Yet I still feel I want to do something more”.
The ‘more’ includes starting a charity, the aim of which is to celebrate the birth of second daughters; to pay for a party, for sweets and fireworks. The memory of being unwanted and uncelebrated as a daughter clearly has remained with Asma Khan and has been a driving force behind her many achievements.
You can probably see why my attention was caught by Asma Khan's story. I believe whole heartedly in equality of opportunity; dignity and value for every human. And I'm a woman.
God created humankind in his own image,
in the image of God he created them,
male and female he created them.
Genesis 1:27 is the basis of the Christian belief that everyone is born with equal value; with worth independent of their earning capacity or cultural currency.
I have a daughter; just one; and I am not OK with a world where her sex could be an obstacle to success; where hopes and goals might be denied her because she is a girl. Stories like Asma Khan's give confidence to women and girls, and inspire them to reach and dream.
That is worth celebrating.
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