Love, Loss, and What We Ate: A Memoir (3 page)

There was Team Latino with Aarón Sánchez and Alex García. There was Team Mediterranean with Rocco DiSpirito and Michelle Bernstein. Michael Symon and another chef had the midweek eastern European slot. There was Caribbean cooking and soul food from the South. And then on Fridays there was me: Team, well, International Brown, I guess. The show was called
Padma’s Passport.
Oddly, I had no cohost. And of course, I wasn’t a chef, but a home cook. It was the first time—but far from the last—that I would feel completely out of my depth in the food world. Meanwhile, I still occasionally auditioned for parts in L.A. and New York. I played a bitchy, talentless pop singer named “Sylk” in Mariah Carey’s
Glitter.
I played a kidnapped princess on
Star Trek: Enter
prise.
Nothing groundbreaking, but I was having fun and happy to be working.

The next few years were, for the most part, blissful. I was in love. I soon was living in a beautiful house, which Salman bought and which I renovated. I trawled Simon’s Hardware for knobs and handles and hired contractors. We restored the brownstone from four apartments to its original glory as a Gilded Age single-family home. When we were together in New York, even before we moved out of our sublet, we had our daily routine. Salman typically woke before I did. He’d make me green tea with honey and buttered toast and sweetly set it on my bedside table. I’d go to the gym, shower, then go to auditions or jobs or sit at a stool in the kitchen with my laptop, cooking and reading in preparation for my show. I overthought the process, researching cardamom and rehearsing the dozens of facts I’d learned so I would be armed with enough things to say on camera. I was learning on the job and until then had only my experience on Italian television to go by. I’d do my own work until I knew Salman’s daily writing session was almost over, then I’d bound up the stairs to the third floor, where his office was, all the while thrilled that I lived in New York City. In a house. With a staircase.

I’d poke my head into his office and find his lap. Occasionally, he’d show me drafts of his work—an article for
The New Yorker,
an op-ed for
The Guardian
—and I’d pore over each one, trying to impress him with my thoughtful feedback. He ultimately made it clear that anything but my gushing approval would be ignored. But I didn’t mind. He was the writer, after all.

One summer, we were walking together in the middle of Central Park when it suddenly started to rain. The clouds spilled sheets of water on us, and we took shelter under a tree. I was tugging at his arm, trying to pull him back out into the downpour, because after growing up on Bollywood rain sequences, the notion seemed quite romantic to me. He wouldn’t
budge, muttering about not wanting to turn his clothes into a soppy mess. I just laughed then. When you’re in love, such differences of opinion seem beguiling.

At my most ardent, I sought to please and charm him, by preparing his favorite foods, decorating our home, looking my best, and telling him funny stories that I had rehearsed in my head on the way home to him. We had countless dinner parties for our friends, and I tried to create evenings that would please everyone, but particularly him. I loved hearing him hold forth from the head of the table, telling his layered stories as I flitted in and out of our kitchen barefoot. My feet throbbed as we lay in bed, satiated after those long evenings, reliving what funny things everyone had said and done as we fell asleep in each other’s arms. We had our own patois, a jumble of East and West, a language of love and humor for comparing notes on the world.

Early on, I was both entranced and terror-stricken by his friends. I didn’t realize that authors, like basketball players, hung out together. His friends were literary giants like Susan Sontag, Peter Carey, and Don DeLillo. Dropped in the middle of these people, I was unsure of myself and daunted by what he had said about them. I loved talking about books, but I was in constant fear that my English-lit-class knowledge would extinguish itself midsentence. And so I would sometimes retreat to the kitchen, where I could relish our guests and their stories from a safe distance. At the table, among others, were Don and his wife; Paul Auster and his second wife, Siri Hustvedt, herself an accomplished writer; their daughter, Sophie, barely a teenager; and Susan Sontag.

My insecurity at meeting Salman’s friends revealed itself mostly in my cooking. My strategy for overcoming feelings of inferiority was to keep my hands busy, to cook and bring drinks and clear plates. For our first dinner party in our Upper West Side sublet, I planned a simple Indian menu. Our food is more regional than most Westerners realize, and I wanted to
show the nuances of flavor from both my South Indian roots and Salman’s northern Kashmiri ancestry. I had perused a cookbook written years ago by Salman’s sister and noted that as kids they loved chicken—their father would complain about how much Salman and his sisters wanted to eat it all the time. The first four recipes all had yogurt in them. It was common for North Indian and especially Kashmiri dishes to have yogurt or cream, so I made a creamy chicken curry with mint from my first cookbook named after my uncle Chidambaram. The recipe called for a healthy dose of fiery dried red chilies, as well as garam masala, a North Indian spice blend of freshly dry-roasted and ground spices such as cinnamon, coriander seed, cardamom, and cumin.

I wanted Salman to feel not just at home, but like he was
back home,
where we were from. It was how he made me feel. I could not be his first wife (or his second or third for that matter). Indeed, because of our age difference, I could not experience many of his firsts with him. But I could, with my cooking, take him back home, to a sweet, idyllic place and time, back to those smells of childhood and India. I wanted him to feel that with me, he
was
finally home.

I found a heavy cast-iron pan, heaved it up onto the stove, and began to roast the whole spices and chilies together. I tossed around the coriander seeds and cinnamon twigs, scraping the pan with my metal spatula as I raked them back and forth. My eyes began to burn and tear as the spices released their oils. The aroma of those spices I hoped would be carried upstairs to his workroom, where he sat writing. I ground them up in an old Vitamix and wondered if our landlords would ever get the smell out of the machine. I doubted the sweet patrician kitchen with eyelet curtains and Betty Crocker décor had ever been assaulted with such smells. I made a mental note to soak the inside of the flask with lemon juice.

I made white beans with tomatoes and
amchur,
or dried green mango powder. The plump, round pink tomatoes here in the U.S. tasted bland
and watery to me most of the year. I took to adding a pinch of palm sugar and green mango powder to duplicate the sweet and sour notes in the less good-looking but delicious tomatoes from back home. I used a whole stick of butter to fry the ginger and red onions in the wok, before adding the rest of the ingredients. There was a street-food stew we ate with fluffy white bread buns as children called
pav bhaji.
I remembered having it first in Pune when I went to visit my aunt Neela after her marriage. There would be a semicircle of scooters and motorcycles gathered around a man with a huge black iron griddle about three feet across. Here the various vegetables would be bubbling away with tomato and ginger, a ton of not ghee, but Amul butter. Whole bricks would be buried in the hot stew, which got darker and darker as night set in. The tangy mix of ginger and dried green mango, fat and spices, bathed the soft, buttery white beans in just enough heat.

I made delicate lemon rice, common in our southern state of Tamil Nadu. Mustard seeds and curry leaves (sent from my mother’s garden in Los Angeles), fresh serrano chilies, and white gram lentils were fried in hot oil with turmeric and cashews. That hot oil was mixed into the rice with fresh lemon juice and kosher salt. The bright-yellow hue would look stunning at the table. And to cool things off, I made
raita,
a yogurt-and-cucumber relish.

I kept my hands a little too busy—I cooked three times the amount I should have. We didn’t even have room in the fridge for the leftover lemon rice and
raita,
the curried chicken with cream, or the white beans. But luckily, everyone seemed to enjoy the meal. Beautiful young Sophie proclaimed she liked the spread and would be happy to take much of it home, which a few of the guests did.

It helped, too, that I cooked. Who doesn’t like the cook? My favorite among the guests was Don. I often found myself, at dinner parties and Thanksgivings, sitting with him. He spoke to me, as he always seemed to,
softly and with great care. The opposite of pretentious, he spoke about his work, if at all, as a plumber might about installing pipes. Generously, he treated me like a peer. My favorites aside, I appreciated them all for their kindness toward me. If they were judging me, they never let on. For all of Salman’s warnings that there was “good Susan and bad Susan,” Ms. Sontag was always a pussycat.

My relationship wasn’t all glamour and high-minded discussion, of course—and thank goodness. Early on, acquaintances would ask me breathlessly, “So does he just walk around being brilliant all the time?”

“Yes,” I’d say. “I keep a notebook on me at all times to record every word.”

“Wow, what did he say last night?”

“He told me to stop hogging the sheets.”

B
y 2001, I had begun writing
for magazines: first
Vogue,
then a style column in
Harper’s Bazaar,
and a regular stint on food and fashion at the
New York Times
syndicate. I was still doing occasional modeling jobs here and there, but I began to enjoy the writing much more. That is to say, I enjoyed having written, once the piece was done. I still had serious insecurities as a writer, which being published did nothing to assuage. I was lucky in that Glenda Bailey of
Harper’s
and Gloria Anderson at the
Times
pretty much left me to write about whatever interested me. I began by doing a piece for Anna Wintour on the scar on my arm, but I was terrified of writing it. Here, my future husband was extremely supportive and edited the piece before it went to
Vogue.
Having him upstairs in his office while I was down in the basement writing was daunting. But if I really got in a jam, it was also helpful—except that he knew little about fashion and had little patience for being interrupted. But he damn well did know how to write.

The series on the Food Network did not get renewed after the first season. I did land a gig hosting a couple of documentaries called
Planet Food
for the network and for Discovery International. A sort of light
precursor to Anthony Bourdain’s
No Reservations
(but with better hair!), it involved my traveling to a country and getting to know its people through their food. They were hard shoots, but I was totally in my element. I loved nothing more than spelunking around a place and tasting my way through it. I had done as much throughout my modeling career anyway. All those years of traveling to shoot French bras in Bali and Scottish sweaters in the Seychelles led me to taste and experience the world in a way I would have never been able to otherwise.

Because I had started modeling later than most, after my bachelor’s degree, I was able to appreciate it more. At the end of those many trips, my suitcase was jam-packed with strange spices and sauces, seeds and twigs. I would use these in my own kitchen back in Milan, Paris, or New York to try to re-create what I had tasted in those various corners of the planet. Coming from India and spending what seemed like most of my upbringing in the kitchens of my grandmother, mother, and various aunts (that’s where all the action was, after all), I valued and took a keen interest in spices. Living and cooking in Europe during my twenties taught me for the first time about French technique. And the modeling jaunts afforded me the possibility to learn how people ate in other parts of the world. But I was just a good cook with a bottomless curiosity about food. I had never in my life entertained the idea of a career in the culinary arts in any form until the Food Network thought I was capable of one. I still wasn’t sure they were right. I would have never even thought of publishing that first cookbook, but my publisher, who suggested the idea, thought there was a marketing hook, banking on our culture’s curiosity about models and their diets.

The acting was slow going; my degree in theater mattered little. I would audition for parts in films and TV while still writing and modeling. I’d get a few bites or at least callbacks. Often I heard that they liked me but just “weren’t going ethnic with this role.” When it finally came out,
Glitter
was panned. The transition out of modeling and into a new career was a very haphazard and gradual one. I had to look hard at where my professional life was going and decide to be open to whatever work there was. My modeling career had been born of financial necessity, and then pursued because I had become easily accustomed to the lifestyle and, of course, the money. I had been able to pay off my college loans before many of my peers even settled into their first jobs or careers. But I felt some measure of self-loathing and deep insecurity for being in a profession that didn’t engage my mind, that seemed to be due to no accomplishment of my own but rather to the alchemy of the genes endowed to me by my parents. I wasn’t feeling guilty or bothered enough, however, to do something about it until the flow of work slowed down. My schedule also made it easy for me to travel around the globe with Salman for awards, literary festivals, and red carpets, but it was unpredictable and work came in waves. It was hard to plan dinners with friends and then have to cancel them at the last minute because some shoot or modeling job came up. And bookers don’t eagerly continue to push for work for capricious girls with catalog and ad clients. I was luckier than many of my colleagues making the same transition, because I had a roof over my head. Still, I was anxious to make something of myself beyond modeling and prove my worth to my family back in India. I knew they were happy for me. My modeling had brought me much financial success, and also brought me home to India more often. But I am not sure if I could call what they felt about my work “pride.” The thing that gave me the most satisfaction was cooking. In the kitchen I felt happy and confident.

Eventually, I got around to signing another contract with my publisher, who had been asking for a second cookbook for quite some time. This was right before my marriage to Salman. I had been tinkering with recipes for a few years, but my other writing always took me away, as did those intermittent auditions. I would stop everything I was doing to study
my lines or finish an article on deadline. I also had, of course, to sit home on these occasions instead of accompanying my future husband to the many events he developed an appetite for attending. Salman’s movements had been so extremely curtailed and limited by the fatwa and the entailed security issues that now that he was free—or freer—to go about his business, I found he was making up for lost time. Who could blame him?

At first it was fun going to all those events. I met many wonderful people I would have never had occasion to come across. I was modeling, acting, writing, and now about to embark on getting another book published. I was also trying to develop another show on food. It became difficult to manage it all. When I was cooking, I felt the hours slip by. I was never so happy as when barefoot in the kitchen with my hands sticky and my hair smelling slightly of grease. My schedule was erratic and unpredictable. It was a bummer to stop what I was doing in the kitchen, shower, and go to audition for a part that I knew I probably wouldn’t get. I should have been happy to have the audition. Wasn’t it what I wanted? Hadn’t I studied for a chance to do precisely this?

My acting work was picking up: I had just been cast as Princess Bithia in ABC television’s new version of
The Ten Commandments,
which meant I would be away for five weeks in Morocco filming. Salman grumbled about my being away that long. Coming to visit me in a Muslim country was not a possibility. Indeed, the producers hired two security officers to accompany me twenty-four hours a day, the whole time I was there. I felt embarrassed because I was the only actor who needed this precaution due to my personal life. But I was relieved that the producers were willing to hire me in spite of this additional expense.

I still wanted to find a way to combine being in front of the camera with my love of all things culinary. I wanted to do another show about food and culture. I had loved doing
Padma’s Passport,
but I didn’t want to do another how-to show. I took to hosting
Planet Food
like a duck to water
and found I was actually pretty good at it. I had a glorious time doing that show. Being thrown on Italian television when I was at the tail end of my modeling days in Italy as part of the cast of
Domenica In
taught me much about hosting. You had to be quick-witted and ready for anything. You had to gauge the set and your guests and adjust accordingly. The adrenaline rush of having no script and being on live TV suited me well. I learned so much on
Domenica In
that I still use today. I wanted to go back to TV, as a host, and do another show on food. I met an executive at the E! network in L.A. who suggested I meet with her friend in New York at Bravo. I was an avid watcher of their show
Inside the Actors Studio,
and I knew they had had great success with
Queer Eye for the Straight Guy.
So I went up to 30 Rockefeller Center to see Bravo’s president, Lauren Zalaznick. She and her vice president Frances Berwick listened intently to my pitch. My idea felt too narrow and highbrow for them; they needed something broader with more mass appeal. But they did want to do something in the food space. And to that end, they were developing a food competition show and wondered if I would be part of it.

I would meet with Andy Cohen and Dave Serwatka of Bravo and have numerous long conversations with Shauna Minoprio, the show’s first executive producer. At first skeptical of the idea of reality television (I tended to watch PBS and the History Channel), I was impressed by how these people wanted to turn food into a serious competition. Shauna referenced the old seventies show
Master Chef
in England, which I had seen years back and liked. She spoke passionately about wanting the new show to be a proper professional competition rather than some bonhomous how-to show about who could make the best Bundt cake. She loved Julia Child but had no interest in adding to the pile of imitators already on TV. They had researched the food world and even gotten Tom Colicchio of Gramercy Tavern fame as a head judge and a woman named Gail Simmons of
Food & Wine
magazine to participate. I was excited to be part
of the show. Little did I know that I would spend the next decade with these folks.

In the meantime I was still reading for parts both here in America and in London. We spent half our time in the UK because of my husband’s children. I felt the self-induced pressure of making something out of myself and I wasn’t going to wait for these TV people to get their ducks in a row. I was still writing for magazines but I could do that anywhere, and it actually helped to be in Europe during the fashion shows. The writing also made me more portable, so it was easier to travel with Salman. I noticed he would get grumpy if my schedule conflicted with his, and lately I seemed to always be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

I found it hard to keep all these balls in the air. Salman and I had married in the spring of 2004, and I had hoped that this would bring a sense of calm and additional security to our relationship. That we would settle somehow into a rhythm of work and life. But I was never there enough for him. I was struggling to keep him happy while still pursuing all the things I thought would lead to a life not reliant on modeling lingerie or selling shampoo—or on my husband, for that matter. If I got a callback, I was happy, but then I’d have to break it to my husband that I couldn’t leave with him on one of his upcoming trips to Austria or Brazil. If I told my agent I couldn’t go to the callback, my agent (who had been hard to get in the first place) would think I was crazy.

By the time Bravo was ready to shoot the food show, I had signed on to do a miniseries for British television called
Sharpe’s Challenge
with an actor from the
Lord of the Rings
film trilogy named Sean Bean. It was a real bodice-heaver, a period piece set in India during the British Raj. We were to be on location for several weeks, this time in Jaipur, Rajasthan. And I, of course, was to play the local evil queen. Fantastic, I thought. Now we’re getting somewhere. Andy Cohen, the programming head of Bravo, called, and I had to tell the network I couldn’t do the food show.
On the other hand, I had done two miniseries in the same year. I finally felt like my career was taking shape and taking a permanent turn away from modeling.

My culinary ambitions would have to wait. But I watched the first season of
Top Chef
when it came out, and I thought it had some great elements. For the first time, I heard haute cuisine and fine dining being discussed on TV as they were in real life, analyzed matter-of-factly and without pretense. I was frankly surprised it wasn’t too inside baseball for most viewers. But I loved what Bravo and the production company Magical Elves had done. They had made the rarefied world of gourmands and Michelin-starred chefs approachable and understandable to those in the audience who weren’t necessarily food lovers, or “foodies,” as they would come to be called.

Then one day, several months later, I got a call from Andy Cohen again. “Are you free
now
?” he asked. They were green-lighting the show for a second season, and while the ratings were modestly good, they were going to make changes and put a lot more resources behind it.
Top Chef
would become the thing most Americans would know me from. I had no idea how long it would last or what it would mean. I had done live television in Italy and I liked hosting. I had wanted to do some type of work around food. I was still working on my second cookbook, and the show could definitely give it a boost. It seemed like fun. Who wouldn’t want to sit around eating delicious food and talking about it all day?

My first season, we shot in Los Angeles. Luckily, my husband also had to be in L.A. for part of it and so could visit. It was daunting how many hours it took to shoot a one-hour program. I was used to live TV and we’d just basically flown by the seat of our pants on the Food Network. Here we did, too, but the “hurry up and wait” of it all was insane. Since then we’ve gotten much better at streamlining the show, but things can still take a while. We were shooting at UCLA and I remember thinking how nice it
was that my husband could finally come to see me working. But watching a TV show being made isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, and he soon got bored and went back to the hotel.

Things were going really well for me professionally and I started feeling better about myself. Just as I was convinced my days appearing in magazines were over,
Newsweek
called to tell me they wanted to put me on their cover to go with a story about the “New India.” I was totally thrilled and couldn’t believe it. I got off the phone and ran upstairs to tell Salman. He was at his desk and as usual I crawled up onto his lap. The moment I looked into his face and uttered the news, some knee-jerk reaction inside me braced for his reply. Lately, anytime I had some good news about my professional life, it seemed to interfere somehow with us. He just said, “That’s great, I’m happy for you. The only time
Newsweek
put me on their cover was when someone was trying to put a bullet in my head.” I didn’t know how to react. I didn’t want to anger him by saying the wrong thing or overreacting. I just wanted him to be proud of me, for us to savor this moment together.