The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At the top of her game
With a new series of her own, Padma Lakshmi is an advocate for others.
Following the 2016 election and Padma Lakshmi realized policies that were being changed or reversed would have a lasting effect on her daughter’s life and her children’s lives and that pushed her to do more.
In the years since, the “Top Chef ” host has taken her activism to new levels, beyond her work with the Endometriosis Foundation of America, which she co-founded in 2009 to help educate the public and the medical community about the disease, which affected her health and relationships for years. Lakshmi has been an ambassador for immigrants’ rights and women’s rights with the American Civil Liberties Union. She works on discrimination and inequality with the United Nations Development Program, and, more publicly, she has proven a serious ally to marginalized communities on her Twitter feed, where she provides no quarter to racists, abusive police officers, apologist politicians and the man who occupies the house at the end of
Black Lives Matter Plaza.
Streaming now, Lakshmi is using her sizable megaphone for another kind of educational campaign: In her new Hulu series, “Taste the Nation,” she visits immigrant and Native American communities and asks them to share their stories with a country that has frequently ignored or demonized them. Over the course of 10 episodes, Lakshmi cooks with immigrants from Mexico and Iran, learns to make beer with a German home-brewer, investigates how Native Americans
are reclaiming their ancient foodways, and even spends time in the kitchen with her idol, Madhur Jaffrey, the Indian-born actress who would blaze the trail for subcontinental cooking in America.
“People often say, ‘Oh, you’re doing your thing like [Anthony] Bourdain,’” Lakshmi explains during a Zoom call with The Washington Post. “And I’m like, ‘Well, yes, I guess I’m traveling and eating. But it stops there.’ My point of view is infused with my life experience. And I am a woman, and that affects my point of view. I’m a mother. That affects my point of view. I’m a woman of color living in a white society her whole life. That affects my point of view.”
At 49, an age when many women find their star on the wane in Hollywood, Lakshmi is entering her prime. She practically embodies her given name, Padma, Sanskrit for “lotus,” the flower associated with spiritual awakening and overcoming obstacles. In Eastern traditions, the lotus is a symbol for life’s struggle: To reach its full potential, the lotus must take root in the muddy bottom of a pond and rise through the muck to find the light. Nearly a half-century into a life with great highs and lows, Lakshmi appears to be basking in the light.
Growing up
Shuttled back and forth between India (her birth country) and the United States (her adopted country) for much of her childhood, Lakshmi grew up in two worlds, never completely home in either. In both environments, there were codes to be learned, burdens to be shouldered and expectations to be met. As a Tamil-speaking Brahman from South India — part of the country’s highest caste — Lakshmi adhered to a vegetarian diet early in life. Her extended family believed in the importance of a good education and, although more matriarchal than many households, they still followed certain gender roles. Women were subordinate to every man in their household, marriages were arranged and wives wore thalis around their necks to mark their marriages, “a beautiful dog collar,” Lakshmi writes in her memoir, “Love, Loss, and What We Ate.”
In a “Taste the Nation” episode, Lakshmi sits down with Jaffrey to talk about the gendered roles in India during their respective generations.
“I wanted to be a woman who worked, which I couldn’t do in India. I rebelled,” the 86-year-old tells Lakshmi in the episode titled, “Don’t Mind If I Dosa.” “As a woman in India, there was just a ceiling of some sort, and the family would treat you differently. You were your father’s daughter, your brother’s sister, your grandfather’s granddaughter.”
“And your husband’s wife,” Lakshmi adds.
“And eventually your husband’s wife,” Jaffrey agrees. “I thought of myself as a free person, and I knew I would find my place.”
Like Jaffrey, Lakshmi would find success in the United States, though her fame would not be as intimately connected to India and the country’s vast gastronomy as Jaffrey’s. In fact,
Lakshmi’s first role model was not someone from the food world. It was her mother, Vijaya Lakshmi, who defied cultural traditions, divorced her first husband and moved to the United States to start life anew as a nurse in New York City. When Padma was 4, she joined her mom, witnessing firsthand the struggles of a single parent in a foreign country.
“I saw my mother working incredibly hard,” Lakshmi says. “I saw her will a life for us and sort of sculpt the mist out of nothing. To see where my mother wound up and to see where she started in life — and I guess the same could be said of me in large part — really, really made an impression on me.”
Lakshmi’s childhood in America was not easy. There were racist taunts: Peers wondered why she didn’t speak Spanish because she looked Mexican. They called her the “black giraffe,” because she was not only Indian by birth but tall, too, ultimately reaching 5 feet, 9 inches. At age 14, she was diagnosed with Stevens-Johnson syndrome, a rare disorder thought to be caused by a reaction to medication or infection. Two days after Lakshmi was discharged from the hospital, she was involved in a horrific car accident, in which the family sedan was rearended on Highway 101 in Malibu, California, and sent airborne down an embankment. Among her injuries: a shattered right arm, which left her with a seven-inch scar, first a source of embarrassment and later a symbol of her fierce survival skills.
But she also grew up without a father, which left a different kind of scar.
“I think there was always this hole about my own identity because of that,” Lakshmi says. “I was incredibly loved by a very large family on my mother’s side, whom I’m extremely close to. I didn’t want for any love. But I just didn’t know such a basic and integral part of who I was.”
After earning a degree in theater arts from Clark University in Worcester, Massachusetts, Lakshmi pursued modeling and acting, then wrote a cookbook, “Easy Exotic,” published in 1999.
By traditional Tamil Brahman standards, Lakshmi’s career choices were unconventional. “Among Brahmans, it’s almost expected that you do white-collar jobs,” says Julie Sahni, the India native, chef and cookbook author who surrendered her career in architecture to pursue the culinary arts in the United States. Brahmans, she adds, are supposed to work in science-related fields, such as medicine, architecture or engineering.
If Lakshmi didn’t feel weighed down by the expectations of her Brahman culture, she had other challenges as she moved deeper into the world of food television. She had hosted a season of “Padma’s Passport” on the Food Network in 2001 as well as one-hour specials for “Planet Food,” but her major break came when she agreed to host the second season of “Top Chef” on Bravo in 2006. (She was offered the gig for the show’s debut season but turned it down to shoot a miniseries for British television.) With her background in modeling and acting, Lakshmi had to fight the perception that she was hired to be the eye-candy next to Tom Colicchio’s intimidating Vin Diesel stare.
The perceptions were off the mark, Colicchio says.
“Yes, she felt that she was in over her head, and I got a sense of that, but she put the time in,” Colicchio says of Lakshmi’s early seasons.
This is the Lakshmi method: When in doubt, research more and work harder. This was particularly true, she says, with “Taste the Nation,” in which she would be taking on a new role, the interviewer.
“That was the thing I was most worried about, because it wasn’t something that I had much practice in. It was something that I knew would either make or break the show,” she says. “If you don’t get information you need to tell the story and prove your point, you really don’t have a show.”
Lakshmi understands the importance of honoring historic cultures, so that they don’t lose their power and resonance with younger generations. She has been teaching Krishna, now 10, about her own mixed heritage, not just her mother’s Indian culture but also her Texas-born father’s Jewish traditions. (Dell, a venture capitalist, and Lakshmi have been a couple again for a couple of years now.) As part of her education, Krishna has been taking classical Indian vocal lessons, which “she hates,” Lakshmi says.
“To hear my daughter’s voice singing devotional songs that I haven’t heard sung live since my grandfather sang to me when I was 7 or 8 years old is a joy that is so exquisite,” Lakshmi says. “It’s just something very deep, that is further than language.”