A slice of life
Chef, writer, and humanist extraordinaire Suvir Saran came to his SALA 2024 “A Slice of Life” session with VR Ferose, looking spectacular. In his words, he was “in full drag,” wearing a gorgeous ivory and gold skirt, kurta, and dupatta from Good Earth, a boutique in India. He accessorized with a stunning necklace made of lockets with pictures of goddesses, and bright gold shoes. An extraordinary person in style, body, and spirit, it’s hard to take your eyes off him when he’s in the room.
Such was his joie de vivre that as he greeted old friends (this writer included) and other attendees before the session began, he pointed out a small stain on his glamorous outfit acquired from the seatbelt of the car in which he rode over. “Laga chunri mein daag,” he sang delightfully. And when the rapt audience asked for more, he obliged by sitting down and singing for a few minutes.
Saran’s exuberance kept the audience enthralled throughout his conversation with moderator VR Ferose who began by saying the introduction was complicated. Saran chimed in with “Suvir is complicated!” The session was named for Saran’s popular column for The Indian Express, “A Slice of Life.”
American Masala Farm
Saran recounted tales of his American Masala Farm in upstate New York that had high operating costs, two perfectly coiffed chickens called Tina Turner producing eggs of high nutritional content. He spoke of slowly building community in a mostly industrial environment where much hate and bigotry was directed at him and his partner. Providing warm clothes to needy children and establishing an adult literacy program, he slowly turned things around. His partner would say “Till you know me, don’t hate me.”
Going to India “to die”
A series of concussions severely altered his day-to-day life. He was legally blind for 18 months. He had memory issues and a lot of fatigue. He became part of an NYU study where they wanted to study the human brain. Heeding his mother and partner who urged him to take a sabbatical from three decades of life in the United States, he moved to India. He describes his slow recovery poetically: “A scorpion came into my brain and then came out.” He trained in music for 46 years and singing not only brought back words but also alleviated his pain. Talent and pain: these were recurring themes in the session.
Coming Out
His account of growing up gay, and feeling “othered” all the time was poignant. He recounted the story of living in Nagpur, where he would see dead bodies being carried for cremation, and he would think that he was one of them. He thought he was an aberration, condemned to live a terrible life, ending up like a corpse.
He credits his grandmother with urging him to come out. When Saran and his partner at the time flew out to San Francisco to meet his Naani Shanti, she said to him of his partner, “He is not your roommate. He’s your lover. Tell your mother.” And so he did. Learning that his mother was not surprised, Saran asked her when she knew. “From the beginning,” she replied. When he asked why she kept quiet, she replied, no mom wants her child to be different.
A Chef’s Beginnings
Saran started cooking at the age of five in his mother’s kitchen. Sunita Saran held dinner parties and kept a meticulous diary of her recipes and what people relished. After a stint at the JJ School of Arts in Delhi (“Horrible place! All they focused on was how Suvir is different!”), Saran came to New York to study graphic design. While supporting himself as a stock boy at the Met, he met Hillary Clinton and gave her and Bill Clinton a tour of the Met.
Among his mentors on the journey to becoming a chef was journalist and author Elisabeth Bumiller (familiar to Indian readers as the author of “May You Be the Mother of a Hundred Sons.”) Working by day, he would cook by night, and then rise early to bake. In a few years, he had cooked every recipe in three iconic cookbooks, including the Larousse Gastronomique considered by some “the world’s greatest culinary encyclopedia.”
Rasoi to Michelin
This passion for cooking gave Saran’s employer Henri Bendel an idea. He fired Saran and gave him a fresh start – two years severance to pursue his longings. Saran opened Rasoi, a cooking school, and went on to open Amma, Devi (which won a Michelin star), and Tapestry (“a labor of love”) in New York City. He recounted the disappointment of a failed “iconic restaurant” effort in San Francisco, which fell victim to bureaucracy. Saran described how Martha Stewart stepped over snow and puddles to eat at Amma, and Shashi Tharoor who ate there three times a week. Eschewing the ubiquitous Butter Chicken dish, he would urge his patrons to try different foods and preparations, to broaden their palate. In 2003, he was the first chef to put bhel puri on the Indian menu.
Food for Saran is about community. Calling himself “an inconvenient truth teller”, he recounted telling his patrons “Don’t come to my restaurant more than once a month. Eat at your table, eat in your community.”
What Sustains Us
Revealing that he himself did not speak until he was 5, Saran invited interviewer Ferose, the father of a nonverbal autistic child, to share his son’s poem. This moving and beautiful poem by Vivaan was very much in keeping with the spirit of this session: poignant and eloquent, touching one’s heart, allowing a pause in the breakneck pace of daily life, and helping us reflect on what is really important to each of us.
The session ended with music. Saran obligingly accommodated an audience member’s request to sing a few lines, and again the audience was mesmerized. A remarkable and fitting start to SALA 2024 and its theme “Plurality in Community.”