My Story

In the Beginning

My mother says I started following her around the kitchen aged nine or ten. That was 1986, I’m forty eight now and its 2024. I used to be at an all-boys weekly boarding school from age five to twelve. So I would live at school from Monday morning to Friday afternoon. Then Friday lunch time I would walk out to the parking lot where my mother was waiting to take me home. And I can still remember from as young an age as six or seven, starting every Thursday night, all through Friday, I would dream of Mum's food that would be waiting for me, and I would salivate for it. From age six until today, whether returning home from boarding school, or later as a university student, or a solo backpacker across continents, when I stopped by Mum’s for a visit, I could always count on a pot of my favourite freshly prepared meal waiting for me on the stove the moment I entered the house. Because that’s what Indians do, we enter the house through the kitchen. Everyone else uses the front door.

The First Turning Point

Now I remember, at that young age, around 1986, having a profound realization:

I want to eat Mum's food every day until I die

That was my first life’s purpose. And from that early age I realized that either Mum would need to outlive me - not likely - or I would need to marry a woman who learned from my mother . . an idea I didn't like because it felt that I'd be a lifelong dependent . . . or I needed to learn everything myself. So from that day forward, aged between nine and ten, I first asked my mother the question that would guide much of my life over several decades and continents:

“How do you cook this?”

To which my mother responded: “Stand here and watch.”

And for the next fourteen years, that would be her response every time I asked the question.

“Stand here and watch.”

From showing up regularly to watch, I was assigned the task of peeling onions, garlic and potatoes, then cleaning up the prep area, which meant catching all peels, skins, stalks, stems and other unwanted bits – bones and fat included – in newspaper placed under the chopping board, and dumping it all in the bin. Then washing chopping board, knives and utensils and leaving to dry in the drying rack, and then taking a soapy, damp cloth and wiping down the counter and table. Over the years, I graduated to sweeping floors, washing dishes, chopping and slicing vegetables. Always watching everything my mother was doing.

Graduation

In the year 2000, aged 24, when extended family was coming over for a meal at my mother’s house, for the first time in human history, she allowed me to cook the main dish that guests would eat and judge her by. All the Indians in the house know exactly how high these stakes are! It turned out though, that I ended up sitting at the table that evening listening to everyone praise my mother for her outstanding food once again. My mother’s sideway glance to me with that subtle smile of secrecy among thieves was my graduation.

Since then I have cooked practically every day over twenty four years on three different continents, as a backpacker in hostels, as a camper outside my tent, on and in wood and charcoal fires under the canopy of a forest or the night’s sky, in deserts, next to oceans, on hilltops and mountains, in valleys, in cities, on islands; as a freelance Ayurvedic cook for events, weddings, retreats, private functions in people's homes, and social cooking classes and workshops; London, South Africa, Zambia, India, Nepal, Malta and Corsica. But it is only after that fateful year of 2021 that I would begin to see why this insatiable passion for cooking and serving others was planted in me, why it never let me go, and what I was supposed to do with it.

More Than Just Tasty Food

I always had an inkling that there was a reason behind every move, every temperature change, every bit of timing, every food combination, every sequence in which ingredients were added to the pot, and all the tiny details the passing-by-eye will never see. I just needed it to find me, because I hadn't managed to find it. I could be shown what to do and how to do it, but I could not find anyone to help me understand the why. And the why has always been what has stirred my intrigue.

What is it about Mum's food that attracts such high praise? Why do dinner guests eat her food silently, but at restaurants or at friends who serve roast chicken, there seems to be consistent chatter and staring at screens?
Why do some meals leave me feeling light and uplifted, and other meals leave me feeling heavy and lethargic?
Why do some cultures make it such a big thing to sit and eat together, but others eat as a secondary action while driving or watching the screen?
Why do some cultures eat with their fingers and others with utensils?
Why do some meals affect my mood positively, others negatively, and others leave me feeling completely detached?
Why do I prefer a homecooked meal to a store bought meal every time?
Why do people all over the world love Indian food so much?
What is it about the special chicken soup that mothers cook for their children when they're feeling sick, that makes them feel better, even though all these recipes are different?
Why do woman when they learn they are pregnant, start focusing so consciously on what they eat?
What is it about food that we're not seeing, which we should be seeing?

Coming Home

In June 2021 my father, aged 75, passed away quietly in his sleep. The autopsy said 'heart disease'. For me, my family and all his friends who knew him through his life, this made no sense. The man was an athletic machine. He played competitive football, he ran, swam, played tennis, squash, cricket, golf, hiked, cycled, coached high school children in sports, and even on the day he passed away, he walked 10 kilometers and did three sets of thirty squats. People like this did not die from heart disease. This is what I knew. But I was wrong. For several months I sat silently by my shrine, with an open heart, waiting. My father and I had always had a deep spiritual connection and I knew that while his body had left, yet he was still very much present.

"Dad, this all feels too abrupt. It feels like there is an unfinished conversation. If there is anything you need from me, for the peace of your soul, then tell me. I am here, and I am ready."

So, with my own private questions in my heart, I sat daily by my shrine and waited. And then one day, a couple months later, he visited. As if he was sitting right next to me, speaking in that voice that only I could know, as clear as when he was still in his body, he responded to the questions I had been asking that never left my mouth, but hung around in my heart like a hungry cat waiting by its food bowl.

Now my father's words and request to me were personal, so I'm not sharing it exactly here. But his request, while it began at home, did ripple outward to touch the whole world and future generations. So I am choosing to paraphrase it, for the benefit of all.

"Teach them how to eat, boy, they have forgotten."

"Do your daily exercise, this is important and non negotiable. But it is not the end and it is not enough. You'll take medications and supplements, you will drink coffee and energy drinks; you'll push yourself hard at gym, you'll force yourself to numb your mind in the evenings and on the weekends; you'll force yourself to try rest and relax. But the tiredness of mind and body will eat at you slowly and invisibly. You won't see it until one day you do. And then it's too late. This is your work. Show them how to eat. Because they don't know, and it's killing them."

I shifted my focus immediately and began formalizing my years of studying and research to become a registered member of the Complimentary Medical Association. And in June 2022, I designed the 28-Day Gut Reset and Rebuild Self Healing Course and started walking blindly down this path, trusting that I will be led.