Podcast #116: Padma Lakshmi on NYC and the Greatest Gift
For many, Padma Lakshmi has become nearly synonymous with the reality television show Top Chef, a program she has hosted since 2006. An executive producer, actress, and model, Lakshmi added "memoirist" to her resume this year with the publication of Love, Loss and What We Ate. For this week's episode of the New York Public Library Podcast, we're proud to present Padma Lakshmi discussing New York City and her idea of the greatest gift you can give yourself.
Padma Lakshmi at Books at Noon
Born in India, Lakshmi recalls her first night in the United States as one touched by a sense of magic:
"I came to New York on Halloween night in 1974 and coincidentally, my mother happened to also arrive here on Halloween night 1972, so for us, Halloween has a very special emotional significance in our family. It's a big family with my daughter and I as well. I remember I took a very long-winded way to get here, so it was New Delhi, Cairo, Rome, London, and New York, and I remember that journey vividly. And when I got here to JFK, and I remember driving in, she has a friend with her to pick me up. She had a blanket because she didn't want me to be cold in the New York fall. I remember seeing all these little people, children dressed up in these bright, lurid costumes, and you know when we got to my mother's apartment, she showed me around her little apartment and there was this huge dish of candy, and I thought she'd put it out to welcome me, and every time the doorbell rang, which it did a lot, she kept giving my candy away! So you know, I was very flummoxed by this. She had to explain to me that this is a Halloween, kids dress up, this is what they do. I thought, 'Wow, America: this beautiful, magical land where all you have to do is dress up and people give you candy!'"
Although Lakshmi eventually moved to Los Angeles with her mother, an oncology nurse, she considers living in New York a formative experience:
"I was also very much shaped by New York City. I am a child of New York, and in the seventies, it was hard in Manhattan to find some of these Indian ingredients, so my mother would take me to Chinatown for Asian vegetables or Spanish Harlem for tamarind and sugar cane and cilantro, which was very rare back then; it wasn't at every grocery store. So through my palate and through my mother's adventurousness, I saw in New York — you know, you only have to walk one block to see there are many races, colors, and ethnicities and languages spoken — so I never felt in any way as Other or as much of an outsider here in New York, which is probably why as soon as I was able, I moved back to New York."
Much of Lakshmi's audience has met her through the television show Top Chef. Yet she did not always anticipate that she would make a career in the culinary arts. Now, she often shares a piece of professional advice with young women:
"I always wanted to be in the kitchen. It was just an elevated hobby, but at twenty-five had you told me I would be a food professional or have this career that I do, I wouldn't have believed you, which is why now when I talk to younger women, I always say, 'Find out how you can make a living, spin a living somehow out of what you naturally like to while away the time doing.' Because that's the greatest gift. I have the luxury of doing that, which is very rare. I would never have imagined."
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