Food and the Fundamentals of Storytelling
[Applause]
when i started off
um on on television or in the food media
you know people would watch food videos
for information
right recipes for information you’d
watch those food videos for information
and and and you would just take that
information back
cook that food and you’d say hey you
know what i cooked this today
and there were these packets of
information floating around you could
in today’s world you definitely can
choose your packet of information and
and just go for it i sort of believed in
the city i come from
food is not information at all you know
i come from the city of lucknow where
food is not
information in fact uh calling it a
recipe
or calling it at the face value calling
it out at the face value is actually
insulting food you know
uh you cannot have food without stories
you cannot have food without
a deeper connect you cannot cook food
without a deeper connect
and so i was initially i felt
like a misfit i felt like a uh
like you know um i always wanted to take
the long
way out in this world of short form
content where recipes would like finish
in a minute you know
i was trying to create stories
uh for 16 17 minutes
and and and the only thing that i had
was
belief in the power of storytelling
especially in context to cuisine
and i think that’s what came through and
and uh
today if you see uh uh the uh
the the limited success of my youtube
channel
you know you would realize that
uh you know we’ve broken uh the
three to five minute food video format
and stretched it to
17 18 minutes and that’s fortunately
happened across
uh other channels as well so i you know
we take great pride in sort of
allowing uh food to shine for longer
again i think the learnings typically
were uh
that you know for all of us uh food
once you treat it as an information you
know there’s really not much you can do
but once you treat it as
an inspiration once you treat it as
something that you can connect to
at a much deeper level once you treat it
as a medium that has
the power to touch move and inspire then
you realize that
because people can’t eat your food you
know the best way would have been to
for them to eat your food and the
touching moving inspiring would have
happened they would have just said
i’m gonna i’m gonna go cook it now how
do you create that connect
how do you create that connect uh to
your food and that happens through
storytelling
that happens through um
through getting people to go
inwards and find their own connect with
what you are
cooking because when uh
when they go out there the necessary
objective might not be
that they want to cook it the objective
might also be or the end result might
also be that they’d want to
go someplace and eat it which is just
fine you know or
they’d want somebody at their home to
make it which is also just fine
the objective is that conversations are
bigger are way way way bigger than
um than a few plates of food
right conversations last longer
than a few plates of food and especially
in our
uh context in the indian context when
we’ve
all gotten stories that have passed
down generation to generation just by
word of mouth
we uh you know
there’s no reason why we should not
believe in the power and the
perenniality
of storytelling in our country and uh
you know the funny thing is most of
these food stories have also passed down
a generation by generation by word of
mouth
and once you realize that that hey you
know the food will finish
i consume it it’s over what’s left is
conversation
right i was speaking uh with his
holiness
what uh was said uh struck me
you know um in india we we
eat everything thrives you know we wake
up in the morning and we
tell ourselves the story we we we create
an anticipation of what we’re going to
eat you know
you wake up in the morning and say today
i want to have you know
i want to have that paratha which is
cooked that way just like i had there
you’re telling yourself the story
building uh the anticipation
when you’re consuming that food then
you’re telling yourself the story that
you want to tell
because you just don’t eat right you
you also have to tell a story you also
have to have a conversation
around what you ate so and then
you tell your story again when you meet
friends in the evening saying you know
what
i had this amazing breakfast at this
amazing place and that is how we are and
that is how we are
as a culture we cannot isolate
food and storytelling because food is a
story
that we tell ourselves every moment you
know every meal
is three stories and that is what i
strongly believe in
in the content space or in the
television space and
um and that’s why i i believe
uh that that in in the food space
you know the unspoken the unsaid or as
they say the pauses
have more power than the projections
you know what you’re saying is powerful
but the pauses have more power
and that’s what we are trying to change
we are trying to create space for those
pauses because
that’s when it hits you that’s when you
go back that’s when you internalize
the basis of storytelling is curiosity
right we’re all we’re all curious
uh um curious human beings
or hum sub uh we are looking for stories
and gossip to sort of satisfy that
curiosity
it is what the stories do to us
you know that is is the beauty of it
do they touch move and inspire us or is
just
a fleeting thought that sort of passed
by
and for me i think it’s really really
important that we believe
that food is an art form we believe that
food is the only art form
which you can actually consume which
becomes a
part of you you know uh
every they say right we are
all made of food we are all just food
and that is why um if you’re having
a food and a connect with that food
whether it is a story you heard
somewhere
whether it is um a memory that is stuck
with it
or whether it is that moment that got
created for you
you’re also consuming that moment
and that moment then becomes a part of
your subconscious
forever you know food is the body and
food stories are are the subconscious
you know
and that’s how assimilation happens
that’s how
our growth happens and it’s not just
physical growth like i said it’s also
the subconscious growth so while food
gives us physical growth
the stories along with food they just
get stacked and give us that
subconscious subconscious growth as well
and i think that’s very important and
that’s what we’ve believed in
uh as as as a team and that’s what
um a lot of us chefs now believe in um
i you know when i was i’ll give you a
small example of when i was
learning you know i used to be extremely
extremely extremely frustrated because
learning is a slow process and
especially if you’re learning from those
old masters
they will treat you the old slow way
which can often be painful for
youngsters
and and i used to i used to
sort of get angry and upset and one day
um
one day munir star the the the
gentleman that i learned from he said
what happened
um i said yeah nothing i said okay i get
where you’re coming from
let me tell you a story and then he told
me a story of how
a cook came to the nawabs
palace and he said i have i will feed
you something after a year
but you to give me 365 gold coins
one gold coin every day and you have to
be
right here sitting under this so there
was a
uh there was a dead tree you know just a
stump
a dead tree in the courtyard he said you
have to sit
under this dead tree at uh three o’clock
exactly at three o’clock in the
afternoon and have what i will cook for
you
and the nawabs uh were curious
so uh they they decided to
he decided to give him uh a gold coin
every day
and after a year uh the cook
placed and
he placed that bowl under a tree the
same stump
and then uh what what uh
uh he waited for the nawab it was
way beyond the time that was agreed uh
the nawab came and the cook said
well don’t come here you’re late and he
threw the dal on to the
the dead tree the stump of the dead tree
then got really angry for two reasons
one
is you took a a year and one gold coin
every day
only uh to give me a dal
right and um
two how dare you throw it and
he he arrested the cook the cook was
rested
uh you know time time passed by and
after
seven odd months one of the one of the
servants came running to the nawab
saying the the dead tree is now blooming
and got really curious and he said uh
well well call the cook and the cook was
called
and the cook uh was asking what was in
that dal
uh that it took a year to make he said i
put the essence
the extract of 365 gold coins it had the
power of
um of gold and the rejuvenation
uh rejuvenating ability uh
and and and you just uh you know you
were late for it and
i and the tree sort of came to life
and then my uh my teacher looked at me
and he said well i don’t know what
you’re being impatient for if uh
if food can bring a dead tree to life
while you’re alive
you know have patience uh you you’ll
bloom too
and and that’s how um
that’s how i’ve learned cooking you know
i can never
i can never forget that and i can never
not say that story every time i get a
chance to speak about food and
storytelling
you know and again the moral of the
story was
was left open for you to take forward
but the important
part was that the moment got frozen in
time along with the food
you know and as storytellers about food
it’s very important for us to
to freeze that moment and not just the
recipe remember
um cooking is not technique you know
the technique that’s involved in cooking
it’s a 150 000 year old
technique which is basically the
application of heat to an ingredient
and the the ingredient sort of cooks
that is the only technique to food
application of heat to an ingredient is
called cooking you know
uh accidentally some meat probably fell
on fire it got cooked human beings ate
it
and they said well this is great so and
that’s how cooking happened and then
after that you know between the fire and
the ingredient we just kept changing
uh the materials you know we just put uh
an earthenware pot then we put a copper
pot and now we’re putting steel pots and
everything else
and that’s the only thing that has
changed that’s the only technique and
science behind cooking the application
of heat to an ingredient
beyond that cooking is pure
and pure art and art is
is a function of perception uh and
and and like i said the touch move and
inspire space
does not belong to technique it does not
belong to science it belongs to art
and that’s where um storytelling sort of
sits
right in it sits right in the center
of the belief that food is art
and food is meant to touch move and
inspire
it is not a functional um
skill that all of us need to have in
order to
not be hungry you know it’s very easy
light some fire put something on top
put put um anything to cook
the fire’s gonna cook it might not be
tasty but it’ll be nourishing
so that’s that’s where the sign sends
right beyond that is is is the beauty
of art the beauty of storytelling
remember we started by saying
the only art form that you actually
consume
the only art form that becomes a part of
you
and that and that is food
and that is why i always say
if you’re chasing a recipe
you know come watch a few of my videos
you will not get the recipe but you’ll
get a hook
to the recipe you’ll get a reason to
maybe cook that recipe look for that
recipe have somebody cook it for you
you will find a a connection to that
recipe
from within yourself which touches moves
and
inspires you and that
is is is the objective of food all of us
uh you know if you remember the maslow’s
theory of iraqi
all of us all of us in our journey of
life
self-actualize in a lot of spaces right
um food is one
aspect in that maslow’s theory of iraqi
which
actually travels through the entire
pyramid
you know and that i think
um that i think is the beauty of it but
if you choose to keep your relationship
with food
right at the bottom of just fulfilling
your physiological needs
then you know then you got to find that
connect and evolve that relationship
look for those stories that excite you
and even if you don’t look for those
stories that excite you at least make
sure
you’re telling yourself a story every
morning as to what you’re going to eat
about it
and then telling your friends the story
about what you ate
how you woke up and what you felt about
all of us all of us are storytellers
especially when it comes to food
because all of us
have the ability to be touched moved and
inspired
and when you do that you automatically
touch move and inspire others
this is my time thank you very much and
like i said food is not just
a recipe a recipe is just the beginning
of how you start connecting with
all the best